Errata: Twenty-Third Episode - Oh Shoot

On the production floor of the Syphilis Barracks, Raoul One stood shivering in blue cotton pyjamas and a flannel dressing gown, along with ten of his fellow Councillors. Emergency protocol designated the Barracks as reserve HQ should City Hall be rendered uninhabitable. The PeaceMaker apparatus had been temporarily shut down, hooked suits hanging shrivelled and motionless, heating panels cold as tomb slabs.

‘This is beautiful. Just beautiful. I knew this day would come. It’s the Disgrace Accord all over again.’

‘Oh do shut up, Raoul.’ Monique Three was wearing jogging bottoms and a heavy brown overcoat. She looked rough as giddy hell. ‘You know I’d rather perish in one of the Chorizo’s infamous gravity booths than stand here listening to you grouse about how crappy things are. Nobody foresaw this. Not even Delphine.’

Drake Two frowned. He was sitting on the wooden headboard of Helena Ten’s roller-cot, where she still snoozed oblivious. ‘Yes… speaking of which, where is Twelve?’

‘Dead, probably,’ said Reynard Eight, ‘and good fucking riddance too. Just imagine the kind of roasting that self-righteous tart ’d be dishing out right now – “I told you so”s galore. She’d have made us scoff humble pie till we puked.’

‘But she told us that a Fleshbroker was going to destroy the City,’ said Monique. ‘What did she say his name was again? Oh, Jonas… Jonah?’

‘Jones,’ said Eliza Seven, observing her surroundings with the composure of a temple statue. Her hooped ballgown ghosted the floor as she turned to scrutinise the massive vat of golem-paste behind them. ‘I doubt a mere Fleshbroker was behind this. That saurian monstrosity – goodness, must’ve been at least a GoreMarquis.’

‘Tetradaemon, actually,’ Drake corrected her. ‘If you read the reports.’

‘This is all nonsense!’ Samson cracked the tip of his walking stick against the ground. ‘We could’ve beaten him! We had a hundred and one contingency measures that would’ve fixed his wagon good and proper! We were winning, Jenkins blast you! If it’d just been a case of walloping the dino, we’d have come away with no more than a few cosmetic blemishes!’

Eliza chuckled, hid her smile behind a flittermouse-wing fan. ‘What? And you think losing City Hall is anything more than cosmetic? Really, Samson – I know you’re a few maggots short of a mouldering cadaver but your naivety surprises me. The proles won’t notice it’s gone – realising no one’s in control would scare the lot of them to early graves. This is an inconvenience, at worst. We’ll rebuild bigger and better.’

‘I concur absolutely,’ said Reynard. ‘Not worth getting in a flap about. I saw the lot in my Tarot Poker hand – dino, destruction and all. So we lost a few third-rate civil servants pulling the late shift. Boo bloody hoo. It was time for a reshuffle, anyhow.’

‘That’s not the point!’ Samson Four was shuddering with exertion. ‘Somebody turned our guns against us! The Law Net is down! This is a conspiracy!’ He clutched at his throat, wiping sweat from his coarse, painkiller-white beard. ‘What’s more, we’re in direct contravention of the Accord. The Chorizo ‘ll be on us in no time flat!’

Eliza rolled her eyes. ‘Now Samson, really… we don’t know that. It’s been fifteen years, for Jenkins’ sake, and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of the darlings. I expect they’ve got better things to do than continually check up on us. The universe is a big place, you know. Perhaps they just… disappeared.’

‘Great,’ sniffed Monique. ‘That’s our choice, is it? Baseless optimism or paranoid finger-pointing. Has anyone even thought to ask where the Governor got to? What happens if he fell with City Hall? Will we get to keep our jobs?’

‘Of course!’ Eliza said, swatting the question aside with her fan. ‘He’s just a figurehead these days, after all. We can always construct a replica for formal occasions and that sort of thing. A bit of lime shower gel ought to do it.’

‘His Aide will know,’ said Drake. ‘After the evacuation signal sounded she ought to have made her way here, but there’s been no message, no nothing.’

Jaffrey Nine twizzled the end of his moustache. ‘Maybe she went down with the ship.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ snorted Reynard. ‘Why, she hasn’t been down from that room for – what – sixteen odd years? I’ve only had cause to visit her once – once! – in all that time. Some of you’ve never met her at all. I expect she wouldn’t know what to do with herself in the real world.’

‘Errata’s hardly the real world,’ said Eliza.

A turbine hum and a subtle tic-a-tac-a as one of the loading bay hatches rose.

Reynard scratched the scabbed tip of his nose. ‘Hmm. Hello… who the Jenkins is this?’

The Governor’s Aide was wearing spurs. She dug her heels into the panther’s midnight flanks and it lolloped out of the cargo tunnel, its three heads purring like petrol chainsaws. Her jowls bounced and slopped as the creature brought her to within spitting distance of Errata’s Government.

‘Enough, Waltz.’ Waltz raked his paws against the cold floor, then settled into a Sphinxian squat. The Governor’s Aide tilted her head back. She was packing a carousel gun, its chunky cylindrical barrel pressed to her chest.

‘Goodness,’ said Jaffrey Nine, peering over his reading spectacles, ‘dusty piece of kit you’ve got there, eh? I haven’t seen one of those for an absolute age.’

‘Man alive, woman!’ Samson chucked gestures about like someone beating his way through a jungle. ‘What are you poncing around on that brute for? This your idea of a lark, is it? Where the hell have you been?’

Memenko Six stood bunched and resolute. ‘Where is the Governor?’

The Aide eyed them all with slow loathing. ‘What makes me so sick is that the people deserve you.’ Waltz ducked his heads to the floor. She gripped the carousel gun. Something in her face twisted. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her expression smoothed out to unmediated hate. ‘I didn’t mean that. Congratulations. You win front row seats for the coup.’ She opened fire and the kick jellied her face.

Bullets big as butcher thumbs slammed Councillors back against grunt machinery, roses opening all over their bodies, juice and assorted fleshworks blotching the floor. Helena’s cot blew apart like a luggage bomb and cratered PeaceMaker circuitry began to fritz and smoulder. The massacre took all of four seconds. No one had time to scream. When it was over, viscera lay in pink purple mounds like a heap of laundry. The air stank of scorched metal.

The Aide surveyed the aftermath, gave a long sigh in eulogy. Her hands shone with perspiration, then a look of manic purpose leapt onto her face. Dumping the gun, she reached into a saddlebag, took out a can of soda, cracked the ring pull and knocked it back.