Tattered Skies - Part one -

[Kenny Casperson]

-Prologue-

My name is Altair. I guess you could say I'm a smart guy. Around this city, I'm what passes for a genius, at least where things mechanical are concerned. If it's broke, I can fix it, so long as it runs on electricity or some combination of simple machines. I specify those two because I don't want some dumbass coming and asking me for help fixing his relationship that he fucked up because even though he 'loves her with all his heart' he went and slept with the drugged up slut across the hallway while she was out taking care of her sick mum.

Not my business, not my job, certainly not anything I'm interested in coping with. Fuck off.

So, like I said, I'm a smart guy. Keep to my own business, make a decent amount of money fixing up the various things that break down in this rapidly degrading remnant of civilization. Got as good a life as anyone who wasn't born with a few billion to kick around, so I'm sure not complaining. And yet, somehow, despite my vaunted intelligence, I'm sitting here on this rooftop, looking at the vibrant green armorplast that covers the 'eyes' of the machine that's all that is left of my sister, holding in my arms the most beautiful - and one of the most unconscious - girls I have ever seen in my life, her hair falling down over my arms like waves of silk... fuck, sorry. I get prose-y sometimes... and I'm staring up into the eye of the storm. The phenomenon that's going to bring this already fucked up world to its supremely fucked up conclusion. The thing I am looking up at and contemplating flying my so-called 'intelligent' ass directly into, in a machine I don't understand (which honestly is as likely to kill me as anything else is today), into almost certain death for the possibility that, in my suicidal rampage, I might just find a way to give all these other people sitting around staring like sheep into their own death in the sky - same as me - the chance to get themselves into even deeper shit while this world falls to pieces around them, just like it has been for years.

Fuck. To think that all this could fall so much further into the toilet in only two days...

[Kenny Casperson]

- Chapter 1 -

Three Days Earlier

The place is pretty much a dump.

To understand what I mean by that, you have to realize that the city in which I live has been falling apart, one chip of concrete or plaster at a time, for somewhere in the realm of four decades. Not a nice place. This apartment is one of the not-nicest. Oh well. Not like my place is much to look at either.

The walls were a gaudy red that made it look like a cheap brothel, and that is by no means the only part of the place that give that impression. Everything was somehow fluffy and scented in the usual not-quite-flowery aroma I connect with the same sort of place as the wall color. The mostly naked female body I was knelt beside didn't dispel the image in the least. To be perfectly honest, it was probably that part that got my mind on that particular track in the first place, but far be it from me to admit something like that when it's so much more fun to ridicule my customer's interior decorating choices. I certainly can't fault him for his taste in women, I suppose. Actually, I can, hold on and I'll get to why.

It isn't how she looks, she was something cut from the fabric of men's fantasies, the exact right size in all the right places, not a blemish on her perfect skin, which is exactly the right color to keep her from being 'too white' while still leaving her in the porcelain goddess category, paradoxical as it might sound. Her hair - blonde of course, but a pleasant darker golden sort - was just barely curled and hung down around her curves in the perfect framing manner to accentuate the whole package. Not at all a bad catch. Except, of course, for the one reason I CAN fault the sweaty asshole behind me for his taste.

She may sound too good to be true, especially to be in a dump like this, and if you think that you're quite right, because the 'lady' is an android. The sort that can fuck, actually the sort that was built specifically for that purpose, which explains how she looks, and how she would be acting if I didn't have the inhibitor pins in the back of her neck, and half her back ripped open so I can access the diagnostics.

"Is she going to be okay?" The man asked, a significant amount of fear in his voice. I turned and looked up at him, lifting an eyebrow in what I hoped was a sufficiently not-amused manner to put him off asking again. It was.

I looked back to the pad in my hands, tapping at the lower right corner of its screen with my thumb to scroll down through the various diagnostic info scrolling across it, flowing from the 'girl' through the wire I'd jammed into her spine earlier. It took me a few minutes to get through it all before I set the pad down on the small of her back, and looked back up to the man. "I can fix it." I let the man's expression go from one remarkably similar to a five year old boy's waiting to hear from the vet about his injured puppy to the same boy hearing he was fine, then dropped the other shoe. "It's gonna cost ya."

His smile froze. He knew well enough what I meant when I said that. I wasn't cheap, everyone knew it, if I said something like what I had just said it meant 'not cheap' was going to be significantly more painful than they had imagined. "Altair... look... we go back a long wa-"

"No we don't, Hamilton." I said, sighing and pushing a hand back through my hair. "We've been over this. I deal with your shit because you don't fuck with mine, and this has always gone smoothly, but your little playboy bunny here has lost half her secondary logic array, how I don't feel like asking because I happen to believe it has something to do with one of your odd fetishes, and that's molycirc, Hamilton, even I don't have that much blank molycirc template laying around."

He paled just a little more as I explained. Molycirc was slang for molecular circuitry, the highest point of electronics miniaturization yet achieved. Even before the collapse the shit hadn't been cheap, and since then it cost most people an arm and a leg to get at it, sometimes rather literally. I still had both arms and both legs, but that was only because I had other ways of getting at the stuff than trying to buy it from the few remaining people who'd gotten their hands on the fabricator units. Unfortunately, molycirc was a primary ingredient in any sort of high end android, I had to admit, this plaything of Hamilton's was a top quality model. Probably refuse from the Cloud, but in damn good condition. Models like her just weren't seen around anymore, they required too much maintenance, and frankly there weren't enough of me to go around working on them. Most failed somehow, like this one had, and just never woke up again.

When I was younger, I felt sorry for them. Some seemed so human, knowing they were just going to die because noone could fix them seemed so sad. I know better now. Molycirc looks kinda like brains, that doesn't mean it is. Of course, knowing all the people that die too around here actually dwarfs the number of sophisticated androids shutting down, and the fact that that doesn't faze me much anymore either puts that in perspective. Not much does.

"Alright... alright" the man sighed, shaking his head. Hamilton was good for it. Sleazeball that he was, he made an alright living too, so I didn't feel too bad doing a little gouging. "How long?"

"Eh. Couple days. I'll take her back to my place, I'm not walking around out here with molycirc in a case, I get mugged enough as it is." Usually unsuccessfully. Most people knew what going after me meant.

"Alright. Need help carrying her?"

I lifted my eyebrow again, giving him an even firmer 'what are you, stupid?' than before, and he shook his head, laughing.

"Right, sorry, I forgot."

"No problem." I sealed up the parts of the girl I'd opened, then picked her up and put her on my shoulder, pulling the pad out and onto my pocket as I did. Hamilton's eyes widened just slightly. Knowing intellectually what I was and seeing a normal looking guy lift what was actually a very heavy girl, despite her slender waistline, were two different things.

About then, there was a knock on the door, but before Hamilton could move to open it, a deafening BOOM filled the room, and the whole lock mechanism was blown straight out of the wood. The door slammed open from the rest of the impact, and three men stepped forward through it. The one in front smiled. "My dear friend Hamilton... and is this your customer?"

Inwardly, I sighed, watching Hamilton stammer.

Some days, you just shouldn't get out of bed.

[Kenny Casperson]

- Chapter 2 -

I made an effort to look like I had to make an effort to hold the girl up. It wasn't that hard, because the pressure on my shoulder still hurt a fair amount, even if the weight itself wasn't nearly too much to bear. The guy in the suit didn't seem to think there was a whole lot odd about me, and the two huge cronies at his back seemed similarly disinterested. They stood back with the perfect disaffected bodyguard expressions - which made me a little nervous. Like I said, anything perfect in this city probably isn't what you would rather hope it was.

Hamilton, for his part, played the stammering, shocked idiot part very well. Typecasting always results in a great performance, especially when the guy doesn't know he's supposed to be acting. Sheesh.

"Hamilton... Jason. Now what would possess you to think you could take our lovely gift and use it for your own purposes like you have been?" the man said, his voice sickly sweet enough that it made me want to gag. "This was to be used for your business, not kept at your home for yourself."

Hamilton's eyes widened, and now the whole thing was starting to make sense. Sure explained why he was so emotionally invested in the android, he probably thought he was in love. I'd seen the phenomenon a couple of times, and with a lonely escapist like this guy... Well, I probably should have seen it coming. What I hadn't seen coming was the fact that he'd gotten her from the mob, and that was the sticking point that was about to make someone in this room quite deceased, if all things went as I suspected.

I didn't have any plans on letting myself be one of the people who wound up dead there. Make no mistake, when one of the enforcers shows up like this, and brings friends, he means to kill someone, and while Hamilton kept stammering for his part, I didn't have any illusions about that fact, which meant... well. Time to do something stupid.

"Hey, sleazeball."

My words cut through the air in the room like a vibroblade - and so did the vibro-knife I used my free hand to throw into the bodyguard on the left. The weapon buried itself to the hilt in his chest, and broke the man's stoic facade quite handily, cutting free a mangled scream as the blood filled his lungs. The lead man's eyes widened, shocked. I loved that expression - still do, actually. It was always great to see the man who thought he was in control of a situation realize just how badly he had miscalculated. Comedy gold, I say.

Lacking any other handy device for getting rid of the other two, I did the only thing I could think to do at the time. I braced, leaned forward, and heaved the android over my shoulder as hard as I could at the two men left standing. The man in the expensive suit crumpled under the weight almost instantly, falling back into the second man, who barely moved at the impact. Shit. Alright, one man, one android.

"Kill him!" the suit cried, and the hulking figure behind him vaulted over the bodies on the floor, flying straight at me. My luck it would be a combat model, none of the commonly available units could pull off that sort of agility. I didn't have enough time to get out of the way, and the thing's fist took me full in the chest, knocking me clean through one of the poles on Hamilton's four-poster bed, and landing me quite unceremoniously on the floor beyond, stars in my eyes.

I started to get up, but the machine came around the corner of the bed, faster than I'd ever seen an android its size move, hand outstretched for my throat - I didn't think so. Aborting the getting up thing, I rolled back and kicked out with both feet, catching the machine full in the chest with both boots. The impact was probably worse for me than for the machine, given its weight and how the action slammed my back into the floor, but it gave me enough force to rock the thing back on it's heels, and gave me enough time to roll back forward, push up, and strike back.

As I pushed hand forward, I pulled a catch at my wrist, then slammed my palm into the android's throat while my secret weapon went to work, firing the small explosive charge and punching the slender alloy spike through the armor covering, where it slipped through wires and nerve clusters, discharging the series of parallel capacitors I had wired into it. There was a bright flash of arcing electricity, and a puff of the 'magic smoke' I usually hated to smell so much before the machine simply continued its fall to the floor, crashing down on one of Hamilton's tables and shattering it easily.

Unfortunately, the suit seemed on the ball, and I barely had time to see him out of the corner of my eye and lift my arm to keep him driving the knife he was holding into my side. Instead, he just got to drive it into my arm. I don't think he expected the sharp blade to only go in about half an inch, though, and while it hurt like hell, I forced myself to hide that fact as I looked at him, with as much dispassion as I could muster.

"Sorry, sleaze. Myomer doesn't cut so well." His expression changed slightly as the truth dawned on him, but I didn't give him the time. Instead, I twisted around and gave him a right cross to the jaw. I could feel the bones give way slightly as they cracked under the blow, and that, plus the way his head snapped around and cracked into one of the few exposed wooden portions of Hamilton's bed, putting him down and out - permanently, part of me hoped - was actually quite worth the wound to my arm. The blood was hot on my skin, and already dripping down onto the floor, but I had bigger problems at the moment. "Hamilton!"

"You... you threw her..."

I crossed the distance to him in two long strides, grabbed him by his collar, and pulled him a couple inches off the ground, locking my eyes on his. "Listen to me, you fat piece of shit, if you have any interest at all in living through this, you get the fuck out of here before any more come, got it?"

"But my-"

I dropped him, letting out a breath in exasperation, and pointed for the door. "Move it already! Didn't I say I'd fix the damn toy!?"

"Altair, I-"

I ignored him, grabbing my duffel off the floor and pulling the female android back onto my shoulder. Her heaviness was a lot more pronounced with the ripped flesh in my left arm, but, hell, whatever my other qualities, I try and keep my word about things. Even if I was starting to think I was getting fucked on this job.

While he scrambled about, trying to collect whatever it was he thought was important, I kicked the remnants of the door aside and stepped out into the hallway.

"Hey!"

The voice came from another suit, and this time one with his gun drawn, and I didn't bother to swear out loud - I thought it was rather implied by the way I suddenly sprinted around the corner, barely avoiding the bullets that blew still more chunks out of the failing plaster in the building.

I took as many turns as I could, making my way for the stairwell on the other end of the building, which I hoped wasn't currently blocked by gun-toting hitmen or androids. Now, I don't avoid carrying a gun out of any misplaced sense of chivalry or anything like that, or because I think guns are wrong - almost everyone in this town has one. I don't carry on some days because it makes certain of my odder clients edgy.

And today, I forgot mine.

I got to the stairwell to hear the pounding of very heavy footsteps on their way up, and hit the stairs as fast as I could, not waiting to see what was on its way up. I hit a button on my watch as I ran, though, and spoke.

"Sis, I could use a little shock and awe, here."

"What!? How did you manage to get Hamilton to try and kill you!?" The words that came back over my earpiece were appropriately incredulous, and had just a hint of the odd edge of a synthesized voice.

"Suchara I don't need your shit right now, Hamilton's in deep and I got caught up, just show up and save my ass, will you!?"

"Oh, fine, if I have to. Again."

"Oh fuck off..." I muttered, coming to the last door, the one that led to the rooftop. It was locked and bolted, but I wasn't in the mood to screw around, so I just kicked it. Once was thankfully enough to snap the flimsy bolt and padlock away from the doorframe, and the door slammed open with a sound that sounded louder than a gunshot, echoing across the city surrounding the vast, open expanse of the roof I ran out onto. This building wasn't the tallest around, only about twenty stories or so, but it was one of the ones in better repair, or at least it seemed that way.

Suchara didn't say anything else over the link, I imagined she was a little busy. So I just ran. Had to get as far away from that doorway as I could before they made it up here - oh, shit.

Something smashed into my back and threw me to the ground again - hard. I saw the 'girl' rolling across the concrete out of the corner of my eye, but the android that hit me filled my vision suddenly, and even I had to pale a little at the sight. It wasn't an anthropomorphic model, just an amalgamation of metal and terror covered up with a trenchcoat and hat - it was a little funny, actually - or would have been, if I didn't know what it meant. This was a straight combat model from the war, and these weren't the sort that were programmed to take anything but killing into account. Apparently they wanted the other android alive, or this one would have killed me outright with the first blow...

One thing a lot of people misunderstand about androids is that most of them can't react a whole lot faster than people, if the person in question moves their ass. It takes them time to absorb information, process it, and act appropriately. Most of the servos androids like this one use have a slight operational delay, too. Of course, if they use myomer all bets are off, its just as fast as human muscle, which is why I have a load of the stuff in my body, actually.

The practical upshot of all this, is I know exactly how to stall an android, and while you can't stun one like you can a human, knocking it is usually not such a bad idea. Fast as I could, I laced my hands together, and smashed both hands into the side of it's head, hard enough to put a decent dent in the plating, and snap it around to the side, hopefully doing some servo damage. I used the rest of my momentum to roll away from its shadow and get back to my feet, just in time to see its fist coming for me. I twisted away from it and clamped down on the wrist, then brought my other arm up into its elbow, hitting the side of it with my open palm. There was a shriek of tortured metal as it bent on an axis it was never intended to.

Unfortunately, while such a blow would put most humans on the ground in agony for a good while, you don't get that when you fight an android. While I'd disabled that arm for now, the other came around quite nicely, and - not for the first time, I'm sorry to say, nor the last - I felt cold metal fingers close around my throat.

"Wait!" A suit ran out onto the roof, grinning triumphantly, and I rolled my eyes, even as the thing lifted me off my feet by my throat - which, for anyone who's ever wondered, happens to hurt considerably, thank you. "I don't want his neck broken. If you do that, we can't pay him back for our brother." He was accompanied by the usual pair of guards, though I imagined both of his were similar to the one that had me at the time, if better concealed.

"Oh, that guy who'll be eating through a str-ACK" The machine tightened its grip at a nod from its master, and the suit grinned even wider. I laughed. His grin faltered slightly in confusion, and I got to be the one grinning, even if my vision was starting to gray out.

"What's so funny!?" the man demanded, but I didn't have to answer his question. It was answered quite nicely with an earthshaking crash, and a massive, black shape that blocked the roof from the sun. As the suit staggered back, his mind still trying to absorb the size of the machine that looked malevolently down on him, its synthesized voice rang out.

"Let go of my brother, you piece of shit." There was a sharp crack sound, and the android that had me by the throat shattered, broken in half and more by a single hypervelocity round from the mecha's anti-infantry railguns.

I hit the ground, and tore the fingers from my throat before dropping the now severed arm. The suit finally got a hold of himself, and lifted his arm - and the pistol he held in his hand - towards me. "Shoot!" Both of the figures behind him, androids after all, lifted their arms, and I felt a stab of fear as they split open, revealing the weapon barrels they had been concealing.

The asshole had been playing with me, leaving the machines to bare hands. Actual armed androids weren't as common as they once were, since people who could calibrate their fickle targeting systems were so rare, and the fact that this group had them only made me worry more about what they might be capable of.

Luckily, at this point, he'd spent too long playing to have a chance.

"I don't think so." The mecha had drawn back its fist, now it pushed it forward, and crashed it into the roof atop both the androids, driving them into and through the concrete roof, while the buckling surface threw the suit's aim off more than enough that his shot went nowhere near me. Suchara pulled her fist back out, and opened it, holding it out palm up near me. "You okay?" She could actually sound gentle when she wanted to, despite the 34 meter high death machine she inhabited...

I shook my head a little, smiling and grabbing the singular android that hadn't tried to kill me yet today before I climbed on. "Yeah, hold on a second." I walked over to the hole in the roof, where the suit was trying desperately to pull himself back up. "Hey."

At my voice, he looked up, and his eyes widened.

I grinned. "No licking your lips in front of a kill next time." With that, I brought my boot down into his face, crushing his nose and a good portion of his face before casting him back off into the rubble. Satisfied, I walked back to the only android that hadn't yet tried to kill me today, pulled her up onto the hand, and climbed up myself. "Mind giving me a lift home, sis?"

"Sure thing, Al."