Cornering the Killer

Heads up: swearing and violence. Enjoy.

The Morrigan matched the pace of a droid twirling in the black void of deep space, beyond the Sol system. Arthas Jacques struggled into his spacesuit, helped by his onyx painted Spectrum droid. The flickering purple eyes of the battered bot distracted the double amputee as he slipped his prosthetic Right hand easily into the sleeve of a suit that had fitted him like a glove. His shattered left hand in the spray on cast made the suit distort like a condom stretched over a letterbox by kids for a prank. Getting his mangled right leg into the suit was worse.

Testing the seals, Arthas gave his companion a thumbs up with his right hand. Thank goodness for painkillers, he thought.

The amethyst coloured lights of the black droid’s eyes flickered to jade as the bodyguard and pilot program called Purple let Green, the technology specialist program run a diagnostic.

“All good, Boss,” said the droid in Green’s Dublin accent. “The Morrigan is running like a dream. I’m currently functioning at an astonishing forty-eight percent of ideal conditions.” A black metal thumb rose in a mock show of positivity. “And there’s no particular reason the digital components in your arm, leg or suit should kill you in the foreseeable future.”

“Thanks, Green,” said Arthas in his Arab-French accent, typical of those from the Martian capital.

“Right, I’m back.” The eyes sparked as they turned from emerald to amethyst again. Purple’s Newcastle accent was tinged with urgency. “Let’s rip Lord Banks’ droid a new one then hunt down the prick himself. I’m tired of this crap.”

Hoping he wouldn’t have to use it, Arthas retrieved a pistol from the ship’s gun locker. Strapping himself into his seat, he turned it to face the rear of the ship. Adjusting it to a more upright position, he nodded to Purple.

Oxygen was drawn into compression tanks within the hull. A warning light flashed on the heads up display of Jacques’ space suit.

“Reel it in.”

Red lights across the dashboard behind him flashed as the door opened. An alarm which could not be silenced rang in Arthas’ ears as he watched the grey hatch of his ship fold away. Black endless night and the distant white pinpricks of stars were bent across the golden visor of his EVA suit.

The ship accelerated past the immobilised virtual presence device droid which had been used by Lord Mark Ignatius Banks to give orders to his force of Deus ex Sapiens enhanced superhumans. The monsters had ripped through a combined force of Earthly and Martian soldiers, painting the walls of Garrett Xander Neilson Station with human blood. Only Purple remotely piloting the Morrigan through the multilayered glass dome of the battle scene had ended the fight, casting the post-human warriors into the vacuum of deep space.

Purple’s magnetised feet were silent as it stepped towards the maw of nothingness. Reaching into blackness, it snatched a spinning form and pulled it inside. Red lights flashed again more briefly. As the hatch shut behind the droids, the lights bathed the ship with white light once more.

Arthas watched the oxygen gauge on his HUD go from red to green.

Purple didn’t wait for Arthas to remove his helmet. The black droid cuffed the arms and ankles of Lord Banks’ robot. One eye turned emerald.

“Scanning for traps,” said Green. “Oh, cute.” The Spectrum droid ripped off the arm of the virtual presence droid. “Implanted gun, I’m keeping that. Very Biker Mice from Mars.”

“What’s that?” Arthas asked.

“Cartoon from Earth, pre-Martian colonisation.”

“How do you know it then?” asked the curious former Detective.

“Purple’s doing his thing most of the time. The rest of us get bored. I like to watch shows and movies. I had to start going back when I’d watched everything.”

“How far back?” Even with the painkillers he was taking, Arthas felt bone chips scraping across nerves in his leg.

“Years of their lord nineteen ninety-three to ninety-six.”

“Where do you find all of that?”

“The network never forgets.” Green pulled a cuboid the size of a matchbox out of the mechanical surgery patient. “Micro explosive, triggered.” It snapped a piece off. “Disarmed.”

“Thank you,” Jacques said.

Green waved a hand in a theatrical flutter that looked all too much like Lord Banks’ displays during his presentations of Deus ex Sapiens. “You’re welcome, Arthas.” It pulled out a motherboard and hard drive. “Pay dirt.”

“Use the-” the detective began but the droid cut him off.

“External computer? I know, man. I know. Expert system, remember?” Green tapped his head. The droid pulled a laptop off the wall and plugged in the motherboard.

“THIS IS THE PROPERTY OF MACLEOD-MILLER ROBOTICS.” Green tapped the volume control for the laptop. “Tampering with the motherboard of MacLeod-Miller Robotics technology will void the warranty. We reserve the right to charge rival firms with industrial espionage if this hardware is replicated.”

“That’s nice, dickhead,” Green said, eyes flickering emerald. “Tampering with his property is a crime but tampering with humanity is fine?” The Dublin accent burned with anger Arthas would never have expected.

Tapping away at the keyboard, Green pinged the entangled particle the droid used to communicate over any distance with its twin.

“Garrett Xander Nielson Station,” the droid said with urgency. “We need to turn back.” Both eyes were amethyst again, the left one constant as the right blinked on and off.

“Punch it, Chewie,” said Arthas, pointing his one good hand at the Spectrum unit.

“Star Wars, really? Han Solo? You know what his son did to him?”

“We don’t speak of it,” the former detective insisted. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Arthas instantly regretted it as aches soothed to sleep by painkillers woke angrily. He groaned. There was work to do. “How long until we’re there.

“Four minutes,” said Purple. Its voice was building to mirth, “I’m punching it, moof milker.”

“Are we there yet?”

“No.”

“Are we there yet?”

“Still no.”

“Play me something to pass the time.”

Linkin Park’s One Step Closer started playing from Chester Bennington's screamed line; shut up, then Mike Shinoda’s I’m about to break, before Chester’s line, everything you say to me, and Mike’s takes me one step closer to the edge.

“Sorry, I’ll stop whining.” Arthas slowly lowered his head into the cushion of the chair.

Purple switched from Linkin Park to Willie Nelson singing On the Road Again.

“When we get there you should let me drag Lord Banks out from under his rock,” said purple as the long dead country singer belted a ballad about his love of travel.

“No chance,” Arthas shook his head, feeling a wave of dizziness and nausea. “If anyone is going to put a bullet in that bastard it’s going to be me.”

“You’re half dead,” said the amethyst eyed droid, who was being generous.

“As an optimist, I’d call it half alive.”

“We both know you’re not an optimist.”

“True.”

The punctured flower that was Garrett Xander Nielson Station grew outside the front window. A once magnificent glass dome encasing the park at the station's center resembled a broken egg. Slow moving debris floated gently through the vacuum outside the station with nothing to slow its momentum and nowhere to go but out.

“I would hate to pay that double glazing bill,” Arthas joked.

“I’m sure your father will cover it, grudgingly.”

“He’s dead,” Jacques said. A gold feeling settled over him as he considered it for the first time. They had never been on good terms, thanks mainly to the fact that Randal had cloned himself to make Arthas and his ‘twin’ brother, Lukas.

“He snuck out during the firefight. He fled the battle.” Purple said every word slowly, knowing they would have a profound impact on the detective.

The docks were cluttered with the ships of soldiers who had died when Lord Bank’s turned mercenaries injected with self replicating nano surgery bots against the soldiers of the two human home worlds. The Deus ex Sapiens subjects healed faster than guns could shoot. Only beheading one had worked.

“Asshole! He ran off and left me to die.”

“He crawled, technically,” Purple said. It docked the Morrigan in the same bay it had left to crash through the central dome. “So you’re really coming?” The droid began removing weapons from the locker and checking the ammunition.

“Try and stop me.” Groaning as he got up, the man gasped. “Now I know why old people grunt all the time. This sucks. I can’t believe Randal didn’t die. Asshole.” Limping to the door, he held out his hand to his droid.

Purple placed a pistol in Arthas’ hand but held his metal wrist and looked him in the eyes. “I don’t want you to die. For one thing it would violate the three laws. Also you’re my friend and no one else would ever treat me with respect the way you do.”

“No worries, I’m immortal. Didn’t I mention it?”

“I’m not joking, Arthas.”

Jacques looked at the lenses next to the Spectrum droid’s amethyst coloured lights. Mechanisms inside the robot that should have been silent were humming with the energy of a hive of bees. “With you by my side, I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll be in front, soaking up the bullets.”

“Let’s go kill a Lord.” Smiling, the man tasted blood from his burst lips.

“I’m on point,” said the droid. They moved into cover on both sides of the hatch. One eye flickered emerald as the door opened.

Purple charged ahead, checking every corner as Arthas limped behind. Corridors were littered with spent bullet casings and stained with blood. Red handprints on grey walls or footsteps marked in gore punctuated the metallic desertion of the endless loop around the broken dome. Homes of the rich and infamous had been raided.

Distant gunfire was revealed by flashes through the eyehole of a closed door.

“Who’s left to fight?” Purple asked. “Apart from us?”

“Randal? He’s a stubborn old prick. Maybe the reinforcements he talked about were closer than we assumed?”

Purple held up his fist, signaling Arthas to stop. “Wow. Greatest hits from the most wanted list,” said the bot in the Newcastle accent with tones of shock. “I thought most of them were dead.”

“Without our help they probably will be soon. They’re fighting Deus ex Sapiens freaks?”

Purple nodded.

“Then let’s go and defend some heinous criminals from a murderous psycho and his superhuman monsters. Sounds like fun for the whole family.” Arthas flipped off the safety on his pistol and followed his droid.

Admiral Randal Jacques was holding down a barricade with twenty gangsters armed with customised assault weapons. Purple laid down cover fire, allowing the felons to retreat from a dozen humanoid nightmares whose wounds were healing as Arthas watched.

Here goes something, Arthas thought. Lord Banks won’t escape this time.