Chapter Three: Centrifuge — Part 4

Glyph said something both profane and absurd in its robotic language. A small spherical droid with antennas sticking out at odd angles and in every direction, Glyph was more fragile than it acted, and the biodroid had found a way to hurt Glyph at a distance, its vicious attack effectively crippling Glyph’s long-range communications abilities. Glyph hovered near Bamboo now, trying to second-guess the biodroid’s strategic motives. In this game, Bamboo knew with certainty that he was the mouse to which the cat would inevitably be drawn. The biodroid was a sadistic creature, knowing a considerable amount about Bamboo even though Bamboo knew only a marginal amount of information about it.

What Bamboo was learning of its personality was that it bordered on psychotic in its approach to assassination. He also knew that whether he lived or died, the price for his sister’s revenge on their biological father would be paid. Unlike Orchid, who would hunt the boss until her death, the mafia wouldn’t waste their time or resources trying on a second assassination attempt. The biodroid was simply too expensive a tool, and revenge for Jake the Butcher was not worth another attempt. If they had really wanted him dead, they would have sent a hume or android to do the job. Both could be hired to do the job, and paid on completion, making them the cheapest alternative. Bamboo crouched lower, feeling more like a cornered rodent. As if reading his mind, the biodroid began chanting a twisted version of a nursery rhyme.

“One blind mouse, look at him run. Because he’s blind, killing him will be twice the wicked fun.”

Bamboo gulped, saying nothing. The biodroid in question was programmed to emulate pleasure for its work way too much. Trying to keep his thoughts focused, Bamboo curled into the fetal position, hunched over his wrist pads, desperately trying to find a route that would bring him safely to Zon — trying not to create too much of a signal for the enemy to track back to him. His bander let out an electrostatic squawk, and electricity shot up one of its radial antennas as the power core for that transmitter burned out.

Glyph flittered in close to Bamboo’s head, hovering right next to his left ear. “The assassin just destroyed my primary and auxiliary jamming circuits, just as it wiped out my weapons and long range communications moments before. It will take me several minutes to make repairs. In the meantime, it has found you, and will kill you and vaporize me on general principle. You have five minutes to make the jump before it gets close enough to do physical damage.”

Bamboo ignored Glyph’s banter, made his final adjustments, and Snapped out of sector. He materialized in a low orbit around Zon, a red, green, and blue planet with a breathable atmosphere and a small, low-tech immigrant population. The assassin had out-thought Bamboo’s position shift, and materialized a few seconds ahead of him. Bamboo’s face tightened, expecting the assassin to make some snide, rhyming remark.

“Good-bye.” The biodroid said, sounding almost sad.

The killing machine fired three blasts from its disruptors into Bamboo’s chest. Three pulses of focused, flesh biting energy hit the bender suit, and were absorbed before they could do any permanent damage to the man within. His suit did its best to maintain a field charge opposite that of the disruptor. The fourth blast burst the field and hit Bamboo in the chest, just left of the sternum. The suit’s power dwindled and died, and Bamboo felt his breathable air escape into space. Bamboo struggled to keep conscious as the suit restored his atmosphere.

Bamboo had been blasted out of a stable orbit, and didn’t have the energy to recover from his steady fall from space. His resources were diminished, and he was falling without power toward a planet with gravity very near that of Earth. His only hope for survival lay in the drag produced by the atmosphere that even as it slowed him threatened to burn him up. Though his death was practically assured, Bamboo fought the biodroid with everything he had. The unit would continue its assault so mindlessly that it too would burn up with him during the fall. A merging of flesh and metal, the biodroid hardly looked like a living thing. Its dim, glowing eyes focused without soul on Bamboo. Its expressionless face did not waiver and could not be distracted — even to protect its own existence. It felt no pain, felt no compassion, its thoughts merely the result of process algorithms, all of them truncating first with the termination of its target, and then with its own destruction. It simply found its target, and used programmed reflexes and psychological ploys to draw out and kill its prey. The biodroid, holstering its depleted plasma pistol, went after Bamboo as he fell, and would do so until Bamboo’s heart stopped beating.

Bamboo had one weapon, a knife that was a twin of the one his sister had used on Jake the Butcher many months before. As the assassin’s razor sharp fingers went for Bamboo’s throat, Bamboo lunged forward, catching the creature off guard. Even as the clawed fingers ripped into his arm, Bamboo’s blade scored a solid hit. He buried the knife in the assassin’s eye, shorting out the biodroid’s neural processors. Jamming the release switch with his thumb, he deployed the blade’s vicious foursome of spikes, locking the blade into the biodroid’s skull. After a brief spasm, the biodroid went limp. Something at the base of its skull exploded, followed by explosions all along its spine, each blast knocking Bamboo further back from the remains. The shockwaves knocked Bamboo unconscious, sending him into a dead spin. Bamboo fell like a broken bird toward the merciless ground, his bender suit completely off-line.

With the biodroid destroyed, Bamboo was safe from the mob, but his survival depended on his suit and his bander, both of which would do their best to protect him during the impact. The biodroid hadn’t counted for desperation, adrenaline, or respite, because it wasn’t capable of such emotions itself. It had simply responded to a heartbeat and a brain wave, trying to eliminate these things from Bamboo. In darkness Bamboo fell, the sun rising on the far horizon, greeting him in his descent. Minutes passed, Bamboo reaching a speed where air friction kept him from continued acceleration. Glyph protected Bamboo to the last, until both man and bander impacted with the ground, and neither registered existence.