Veteran v-1

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘Will they attack?’ I asked Mrs Tillwater. I could see her shake her head as the answer came back over the net.

  ‘No, they’re just letting us know whose neighbourhood we’re borrowing.’

  We’d reached the crowd of cyberbillys and I saw them both. I glanced to my left and saw Rannu making his way round that way; I glanced to my right and saw Mudge. I let Mrs Tillwater and Pagan go ahead of me and kept my head down. Morag was next to me. Buck was straddling a low rider, revving it. Gibby was kneeling down next to the engine, fiddling with it. The pair of them looked up as we approached. Neither had their masks on, just plastic sunglasses, though their faces were largely covered by beards anyway. Buck nodded at Mrs Tillwater, then I saw Gibby look to my left – he’d made Mudge. A word passed between Gibby and Buck. Gibby stood up, both of them reaching for their old customised,44s. I came round from behind Mrs Tillwater, the Mastodon in one hand, the Tyler in the other. I couldn’t use my shoulder laser because of the radiation duster.

  ‘Don’t do it!’ I shouted. Mudge had his SIG drawn and was moving in on the pair, the fully automatic pistol levelled at Gibby. Pagan and even Morag had their pistols in their hands but kept them down waiting to see what the crowd was going to do. Rannu had disappeared somehow despite being the only Nepalese present. He suddenly appeared again, one of his Glocks levelled at Buck and Gibby, the other held down at his side ready to fire into the crowd if need be.

  Mudge was still moving up on Buck and Gibby. He didn’t look happy. I wasn’t either. I could still remember them flying away from us, leaving me standing with the corpses of two of my friends. Mudge walked up to Gibby and wrapped his hands round the ex-pilot’s greasy dreadlocks before digging the barrel of the gun painfully into his skin.

  ‘Hello, Gibby,’ Mudge said. ‘Jakob, we only need one of these cunts to talk, right?’

  ‘Calm down, Mudge,’ I said. The crowd was edgy. I was sure that weapons were being drawn out of sight. The cyberbilly closest to me tried to pull a cut-down pump action out of her duster. I moved the Tyler to cover her. ‘Do that and I’ll turn your head to steam,’ I said. ‘Okay, everyone, just take it easy. We just want to talk to Buck and Gibby.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Mudge said helpfully.

  Except for Mudge, who wants to torture them to death,’ I muttered to myself. There were a lot of Commancheros here and lots close by. If it came down to gunplay it would get futile very quickly.

  ‘Jakob,’ I heard Morag say. I didn’t like the tone in her voice. ‘Ow, fuck!’ I turned round to see Mrs Tillwater with an automatic held to Morag’s head. It looked like she’d just bitten Morag’s ear through the hood of her poncho – I could see it bleeding through the material. I moved the Tyler to cover Mrs Tillwater.

  ‘You have been told once,’ she said evenly. The suburban matriarch gone, she was all military commander now. ‘They are Crawling Town; you are not. Now lower your guns,’ she ordered. More of the Commancheros had their weapons in their hands now.

  ‘Fuck her,’ Mudge said. ‘Shoot her in the head.’

  ‘I will eat her,’ Mrs Tillwater said, and I believed her. I lowered my weapons. Rannu and a relieved-looking Pagan did the same. Obviously Mudge didn’t. The cyberbilly whose head I’d threatened to turn to steam tried to take my Mastodon out of my hand. She found herself lying on the ground with my foot on her throat.

  ‘Let’s not get carried away here. We lower ours, you guys lower yours, and we’ll see if we can make it through the next ten minutes without any of you getting killed,’ I said. Always negotiate from a position of strength, even when you obviously don’t have one. Mudge still had his gun levelled at Gibby.

  ‘Mudge!’ I said. I saw one of his eyes swivel towards me. Finally he lowered his gun. I turned to Mrs Tillwater.

  ‘Now let her go,’ I said, holstering my two guns. Mrs Tillwater released Morag, who spun away from the serial killer as she was putting her automatic back in her handbag.

  ‘What did you have to bite me for?’ Morag demanded.

  ‘Sorry, dear,’ Mrs Tillwater said unapologetically.

  Morag punched her. It shouldn’t have connected with a vet like Tillwater, but it did. I guess she hadn’t been expecting it; I know I hadn’t. It was hand-to-hand stuff from Morag’s softskills but she’d obviously been practising enough that her body had properly integrated the software. She caught the side of Tillwater’s jaw with her fist and knocked her back a bit. Tillwater’s head snapped back and she looked furious, as did Morag. I got ready to draw my pistols but Mrs Tillwater just smiled, nodded at Morag and turned away.

  ‘Hell, that was tense,’ Buck drawled. Mudge pistol-whipped him so hard it knocked him off the bike. Even I cringed as the bike hit the concrete, scratching the electric-blue paint job on the alcohol tank. Gibby helped Buck pick the bike up.

  Buck was bleeding from the mouth. He spat out blood and a tooth. The crowd was getting restless again.

  ‘What the fuck!’

  Gibby looked at the ruined paint job. ‘Fuck this! Everybody kill these people,’ he said. Weapons were drawn again.

  ‘Buck, Gibby,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was talking to two naughty boys, and she kind of was, ‘both myself and Papa Neon would appreciate it if you would talk with Jakob and his friends.’

  ‘But look what they did to my bike!’ Buck moaned. Mudge didn’t help by grinning at him.

  ‘Everyone!’ Mrs Tillwater said to the Commancheros. ‘Shall we give these old friends some time together?’ Then she turned to me. ‘I’ll be just over here with all of Buck and Gibby’s friends, so I want you to play nicely,’ she said sweetly. ‘Understand?’ All trace of sweetness gone.

  I nodded. ‘Everyone put your guns away,’ I said over the tactical net. Eventually even Mudge holstered his SIG.

  ‘Come on, everyone,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was organising a picnic.

  ‘We ain’t going nowhere,’ one of the Commancheros said. ‘Who the hell are you to tell us what to do?’ Mrs Tillwater walked over to him. He towered over her.

  ‘I’ll come and find you and we can talk about it tonight?’ she said and then smiled up at him. I was pretty sure I saw him blanch behind his goggles.

  Finally, once everyone had stopped being macho, the five of us were left alone with Buck and Gibby. Gibby at least had the common courtesy to look a little nervous. Buck just looked pissed off.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I said to the pair. As soon as I opened my mouth Buck revved the engine on the low rider, drowning me out. ‘That’s pretty childish,’ I said, and predictably he revved the bike again.

  ‘Fuck it. Let’s shoot him and torture Gibby,’ Mudge said as my audio dampeners kicked in to drown out the bike engine’s throaty roar.

  ‘We’re wasting our time,’ Pagan said and again the bike engine was revved.

  ‘We don’t want to talk to you. Fuck off an leave us alone,’ Gibby said. He was looking pretty scared. I didn’t think it was because of us.

  ‘You know Rolleston’s going to find you sooner or later,’ I told him.

  ‘Yeah, because of you, you fucker!’ he answered.

  ‘Rolleston’s always known where we are,’ Buck said angrily. ‘And that was fine as long as we didn’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘Well, whether you talk to us or not he’s still going to kill you,’ Mudge pointed out.

  ‘So fucking what? You know anyone over forty?’ Buck asked. Maybe Rolleston, I thought, but decided to keep that observation to myself.

  ‘That’s no reason not to talk to us,’ Morag said.

  ‘And it’s no reason to talk to you,’ he replied. ‘Unless you wanna work it off. darlin’,’ he said, grinning. I felt like hitting him. Morag didn’t; she felt like kicking him. I was worried that she was getting too violent. However, Buck managed to lean out of the way of the kick. Morag looked pissed off and Buck just grinned at her.

  ‘Maybe you want to watch the mouth-’ I managed to say before Rannu kicked Buck so hard it pic
ked him up off the bike and knocked him to the ground. I cringed as the paintwork got another scratch.

  ‘Fuck!’ Gibby shouted. He sounded genuinely distressed.

  ‘Thanks,’ Morag said to Rannu. Buck clambered back to his feet looking livid.

  ‘You boys play nice now!’ Mrs Tillwater shouted from where she was standing with the rest of the Commancheros, presumably swapping recipes or something. Buck picked the bike up again, grimacing as he looked at the paintwork.

  ‘We’re finished here,’ Buck said. ‘You ain’t getting shit from us.’

  ‘You owe us,’ Mudge said.

  ‘How you figure that?’ Buck asked.

  ‘You fucking left us there to die.’

  ‘We didn’t like it none,’ Gibby said. ‘But we didn’t really have much of a choice.’

  ‘And so fucking what? That was then, this is now. I’m over it,’ Buck added.

  ‘You fucking over it if I come back and bugger you to death with an exhaust pipe?’ Mudge asked. Suddenly we were all looking at him. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘It’s a threat.’ Buck revved the engine again.

  ‘Like I said, we’ve all gotta go sometime,’ the cyberbilly said.

  ‘Yeah, but an exhaust pipe?’ Gibby said, looking a little disturbed. Buck gunned the engine.

  ‘This,’ he said, patting the bike, ‘this is what it’s all about.’

  ‘Look, I like bikes as much as the next guy, and that’s a sweet ride,’ I said, momentarily distracted. ‘But there’s more important things at stake here.’

  ‘No. There’s nothing more important. I know this and that’s why I’m free,’ Buck said.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen your freedom,’ Mudge said. ‘You guys are free to die of cancer, free to die of respiratory problems, free to have deformed kids and slowly rot away.’

  ‘Live free and die of cancer – John Wayne taught us that,’ Buck said.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘I ought to have you horse-whipped,’ Buck snarled.

  ‘Can we talk or not?’ I demanded. Buck’s live free and die young crap was almost as irritating as Balor’s warrior crap. I wondered why people, men usually, couldn’t make it through life without developing some kind of crackpot code of ethics.

  ‘Maybe we should, man,’ Gibby said. ‘We’re fucked anyway. These guys might be jerks but Rolleston’s a real fucker.’

  ‘Rolleston never done marked up my bike,’ Buck said.

  ‘If you guys help us there’s a chance, a slim one, but a chance that things could change sufficiently that Rolleston might not be a problem any more,’ Pagan said.

  ‘You wanna talk to me?’ Buck said. I nodded. ‘Go get your bike. We’ll talk up there.’ He pointed up at the most distant high-rise.

  20

  Trenton

  Why was nothing ever simple? Why did everyone have to turn simple things into competitions? Didn’t anyone want a quiet life? I’d taken one of the pills and then a stim to pep me up a bit.

  ‘Well, that went well,’ Pagan said. ‘Did you have to try and kick him?’ he asked Morag. ‘I thought he was about to open up.’ I’d brought the bike back over to where we were standing. Buck, Gibby and some of their friends were standing round Buck’s bike.

  ‘Which conversation were you listening to?’ Morag asked. ‘Besides, everyone else gets to be a macho arsehole.’

  ‘Not everyone, just Mudge,’ I said as I ran a diagnostic on the bike. It was a good bike as far as it went, but it wasn’t set up for racing like Buck’s would be. I wished I had my Triumph with me. I was a pretty good racer and could hold my own in scheme races back in Dundee, as long as I picked who I raced carefully, but if Buck rode like he flew then I was outclassed both in ware and skills. Still, could be fun, I thought, looking at the course.

  ‘Rannu kicked him,’ Mudge pointed out in his own defence.

  ‘Yeah that helped,’ I said.

  ‘He was being disrespectful,’ Rannu said. Morag smiled at him and gave him a hug. Just concentrate on the bike, I told myself.

  ‘If we went around attacking everyone who was disrespectful we’d never get anything done and you’d have to kill Mudge,’ I told Rannu.

  ‘Hey, I’m not you. I would’ve kicked his arse in New York,’ Mudge said, apparently seriously.

  ‘See!’ Morag said. I was as ready as I was going to get. The starting point looked like a ramp leading up onto the roofs of the terraced flats. There was a ramp on either side of the street. Buck had the right side of the street; I was expected to take the left.

  ‘What’s the betting he’s given himself the easier side of the street?’ I asked nobody in particular. Straddling the bike, engine idling, I walked it over to the starting line accompanied by fast-paced, heavy western guitar riffs and pounding drums. Buck didn’t even bother looking at me.

  Try not to fuck up,’ Mudge said encouragingly.

  ‘What’s the signal to start the race?’ Morag asked while Buck roared up his ramp and onto the roof of the terraced flats, as one of the cyberbillys fired a flare into the air. I gunned the low rider up the ramp, accelerating so fast I was only just able to keep the front wheel down on the deck. The bike jumped slightly as I hit the top of the ramp onto the flat roof about three storeys above the ground. I then had to swerve violently to avoid a huge hole in the roof. I’m sure that would’ve been hilarious for the crowd.

  I was heading for a low wall at speed. I noticed there was a small metal ramp up against it over to my right, I veered hard, only just managing to straighten up as I hit it. I was airborne again, the bike bouncing on its shocks when I landed. I could see Buck ahead of me and off to the left. Basically the roof of the terraced flats was a straight sprint. All I had to do was avoid debris and holes and use the ramps over the low dividing walls. Then Buck disappeared.

  I changed up a gear as the bike accelerated, spending more time in the air off the ramps and bouncing further when I hit the ground. Plugged into the bike I saw its performance in numbers on my internal visual display and could feel it in my head. I tried to get the feeling of merging with it like I did with my Triumph, but this wasn’t my bike and it wasn’t as elegantly engineered as the Triumph.

  I hit the next wall and screamed as there was no roof on the other side of it. I hit a down-sloping ramp fighting for control of the low rider. The ramp took me into the interior of the flats. I hit the bottom of the ramp, swerving to avoid an interior wall and then riding through the next in an explosion of plaster, again only just staying on the bike. Ahead of me I could make out the course, a series of chicanes defined by interior walls and holes in the floor. I swerved from one side to another, getting down as low as I could in the cramped space. I didn’t like the give the floor had beneath my bike. Then I remembered I was dying anyway and sped up. Leaning down low over one of the holes in the floor, I could see it went down further than two storeys and into the sewers below. I swerved the other way, the top of my head just clipping the interior wall. I barely felt it. Part of the floor gave way behind my bike, and I felt it slow, but the wheel caught and I was away. I realised I was smiling as I hit the up ramp. I soared into the air as I came out of the flats back onto the roof. Buck was closer now.

  I throttled down as we approached an intersection in the road. I hit the ramp at speed and was in the air over some of the crowd, who cheered as both of us went by overhead. Buck landed first, I landed soon after. There were vehicles keeping pace with us; I noticed that our muscle car was one of them.

  On the new roof the dividing walls had narrow passages knocked through them, the holes had been patched and there was little rubble. I pushed the bike faster, coaxing it as I saw red lines appear in my vision. This was going to be the last chance to really get my speed up. The terrain became a blur around me. I had enough presence of mind to make sure the way was clear; the rest of it was focused on the ramp ahead. I was sure I was grinning now, the nausea a distant memory, the first sores on my scalp as meaningless as pissing blood this morning.
>
  I hit the ramp. I felt like I was in the air forever: everything slowed down as the tower block loomed larger and larger in my field of vision. The jarring bump, the bounce, the fight for control – don’t lose speed. I was in the high-rise building for seconds, if that. The path that had been cut and cleared through the building was just a blur as I hit the next ramp and was in the air again.

  Then the next tower block and the next, each time throttle down, keep speed as high as possible. Each time going a little higher, each time bouncing as I landed, trying to control the bike and not hit the ceiling. Sometimes I was aware of Buck’s bike to the left of me in the same building or as we flew through the air – he seemed a little closer each time I saw him.

  This was what my boosted reflexes were made for; you couldn’t do this without augmentation. This was why we were different from the herd. Maybe Buck was right: this was what mattered. Land, control, throttle down, speed up, not even thinking about how high off the ground we were as we leapt from high-rise building to high-rise building.

  The hole in the side of the tower block coming towards me was too low. I was too high. I’d taken off too fast. I slammed myself down on the bike, cursing the high handlebars on low riders. I felt my duster scrape against the top of the hole. I was going too fast but if I braked now I’d wipe out. I’d seen people do it in the schemes in Fintry, just jump straight into a wall at one hundred-plus miles an hour. The wheels bounced and finally found traction as I sped between the supports of the building.