Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  ‘On me,’ said Marcus calmly.

  He’d reached the far wall, back briefly against it beside a freshly cut entrance. He then stepped round and opened fire with the numerous functions of his gun. The place beyond filled with fire and explosions, and the sharp waspish sounds of fast-moving metal on metal. He turned, fired again, and two swinging towards me went over, one coming in half at the waist. A beckoning hand. I moved up beside him and we ran into the ruination, leaving the main battle behind. Burning wreckage lay everywhere in a place that might have been some sort of shop. Bodies lay there too. Someone screamed rhythmically far over to the side, while nearby another dragged along the tattered remains of his legs. I jumped him, shooting him in the back of the neck as I did so. I knew how to kill now without hesitation.

  I was good at it.

  15

  Beyond the battle, we encountered Suzeal’s soldiers once more, in the park where I had walked with her. These unarmoured individuals moved a grav-sled towards what I presumed were the front lines. We hardly slowed, dropping them all with a series of single shots, perfectly coordinated. More corridors, tunnels and walkways and dropshafts brought us to a deserted apartment overlooking the park I’d first seen, the geodesic dome close above giving a good view into the hub chamber.

  ‘Take off your jacket,’ Marcus instructed.

  It seemed we would be doing some sneaking about. I put down my weapons, stripped off the bandolier and then the jacket, inspecting a large burned hole in the back, before folding and stowing it. The thing had changed to a dull yellow now, as had Marcus’s.

  ‘Logistics and damage check,’ Marcus stated briefly.

  I set my suit to run it, while he stripped off his jacket and then did the same check manually with his weapons and ammunition. My grenade launcher ammunition was low and I replaced the cartridge, loading up other cartridges to overfull with the remainder from the one that was nearly spent. Carbine power had dropped to half. I swapped out the power supply but retained the first on my bandolier. Suit diagnostics told me of armour damage on the leg, on the back, and on the helmet, which would no longer close down. I looked at quick fixes, but realized the helmet would have to stay up since its ribs had been fused with a laser shot. The other damage required patches which I carried in my belt. I stretched and shaped the first patch, initially circular and of a dough-like consistency, until it matched the hole in my leg armour, then pushed it into place and pulled off the tab. It shifted like a black amoeba, filled up the hole to a level with the surrounding armour, then hardened, its colour changing to match the armour’s present grey. Marcus put the one on my back for me.

  Further diagnostics took me a moment to understand. I realized they were for me: grenade splinters in my leg, a first-degree burn on my back the size of a hand and a crack in my skull. I stared at the readout, then focused on the measures being taken. Numbing agents had been infused, artificial skin had been printed in, and the grenade splinters had been stabilized with an injection of Tufgel to stop their sharp edges cutting further. Bone composite had also been printed into the fracture, and a programming link had been established to my nanosuite to speed healing. I’d felt nothing at all and my head was clear. The military medtech of the suit didn’t want soldiers compromised and I wondered just how much damage I could take and still remain on my feet.

  ‘All good?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘Some injuries,’ I replied.

  He shrugged and turned towards the door.

  ‘It should be easier now,’ he stated.

  We were soon walking through inhabited parts of the station and, even though armoured and loaded with weapons, we didn’t stand out particularly. Groups of mercenaries headed here and there, others just idled about, while still others guarded various areas. When we reached the park, I noticed quite a few of them around the dropshafts leading up to where Suzeal had her apartment. I kept my visor up and set it to mirror, as some around here might recognize me. Marcus did the same. We came to the line of restaurants and bars where I’d eaten with Suzeal. Here the expressions of those who’d been thralled were notable. Most looked worried as they carried out their allotted tasks, but wore bland faces when dealing with Suzeal’s mercenaries. Some looked happy – perhaps those who didn’t know Salander’s slim chances of success. I noted numerous holographic displays and simple screens here too, showing the action going on in the station. I could hear the mercenaries betting on people’s lives again and restrained the urge to spray them with my carbine.

  ‘Here,’ said Marcus.

  An alley cut between two establishments. It was open hundreds of feet above for the first hundred yards, then turned into a tunnel. Holo-posters decorated the walls along it, showing hooders, droons, gabbleducks and other monsters. Inspecting the variety of creatures, I felt happy with having encountered so few. It occurred to me that swift natural selection must have occurred down on the planet, wiping out many of the other horrors depicted.

  The tunnel next opened into a long boulevard. Here further establishments including shops were clustered, mostly empty and abandoned. Travelling along the centre of this, in the opposite direction to us, came further troops, hundreds and hundreds of them. All were armoured and heavily armed, which seemed standard here, but they had other items with them too. The robots weren’t AI drones, or at least I liked to think they weren’t. They looked like heavier versions of mosquito autoguns, walking on four thick legs and protruding more barrels than seemed feasible. Amidst these were also others, not armed but carrying recognizable shield generators.

  ‘Salander,’ said Marcus, ‘cam visual.’ He paused to run his gaze along the length of the column. I couldn’t hear Salander’s reply, but I guessed she wasn’t happy. Marcus nodded then said, ‘Pull to the rim – I will … solve this.’ He shrugged and replied to her obvious query, ‘You will see.’ We moved on.

  ‘So, what are you going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Stop Suzeal,’ was his only reply, despite my badgering him for a further few minutes. In the end I gave up. It occurred to me that Marcus’s terseness had little to do with his viral mutation and a lot to do with his personality.

  Ahead a sign hung above the boulevard telling us we had reached the entrance to Stratogaster’s Zoo – a row of broken-down turnstiles were below it. Beyond these lay a large chamber with numerous tunnels leading off it. We went through a turnstile and took a right to a heavy round door. Marcus turned the wheel at the centre and heaved it open. Judging by the creaking sound and chunks of decayed seal falling all around, it hadn’t been opened in a long time – Suzeal’s people must have used some other access. A series of high corridors and stairs, all in brushed metal, led us up. We passed an opening where a catwalk extended over a large cylindrical chamber, but I couldn’t see what lay below. Then another one, until Marcus turned into the next one.

  When I dropped my visor, the smell hit me immediately: human sewerage, other decay and a weird spicy tang. On the platform stood pedestal-mounted weapons that looked like harpoon guns from ancient whaling ships, but their business ends were more a combination of harpoon and grapnel. Marcus moved out ahead of me on the suspended walkway and, following him out, I looked down.

  The chamber floor consisted of muddy paths worn through a mixture of standard and bubble grass, with patches of thick briar gathered here and there. Hundreds of people, mostly gathered around feeding stations, were down there. Many wore ragged clothing while others were naked. It took me a moment to figure out what was wrong with this scene. The colours looked off, like a virtuality given a sombre monochrome tint. I then realized this was due to the skin hue of the people, resembling that of humans who’d been asphyxiated – bluish and pale. Thin as famine victims, they began looking up, and their expressions showed hatred and aggression. Some sped away from the feeding areas and scrabbled at the base of the nearest wall, even managing to climb a few feet up before sliding down the polished surface. Others protruded tongues which were open at the ends in leech mouth
s.

  ‘She put me in here for a while,’ said Marcus.

  These were the eight hundred prisoners Suzeal had captured and infected with the Spatterjay virus. Glancing across at one of the pedestal-mounted weapons, I realized how she took them out of here. The harpoon grapnels ran from drums of monofilament, with a coating mechanism that sheathed the filament on firing. I visualized the scene of mercenaries firing on those below, snaring them like fish and hauling them up, probably then shocking them into submission before dragging them off for coring and thralling. I imagined the mercenaries laughing and placing bets.

  ‘How long—’ I began, and that’s when the missile hit.

  The explosion tore through the walkway between us. The section Marcus stood upon twisted, and the weight of the weapons pulled it down. Marcus slid off, then fell as the collapsing piece of walkway dragged down the section I stood on. I managed to stick my weapon to its patch on the front of my suit before sliding too, scrabbling for handholds. I caught one of the rail posts as the walkway sank to twenty degrees, then got the fingers of my other hand into one of the gaps in the grating. As I started pulling myself up, another missile hit above and I found myself hanging by shreds of metal. Adrenalin and suit assist kicked in and I grabbed the rail which remained intact, then scrambled up that. The wreckage of the walkway offered further handholds and I pulled myself up into the doorway. Glancing back, I saw the tangled mess of metal reaching down to the floor of the chamber, Marcus struggling to his feet with all the residents down there crowding in towards him. When I dragged myself into the corridor beyond the doorway, I saw that my own troubles had only just begun.

  SGZ and mercenaries crowded in at one end. I snatched at my weapon, coming up into a crouch, as slugs hit me. The impacts sent me skidding backwards along the floor, then tore up a line of splinters as the firing tracked past.

  ‘Don’t kill him!’ someone yelled.

  A pause ensued as I tried to stand and bring my weapon to bear. Pulse gun fire hit my arm and error messages scrolled in my HUD, then a blast opened up the floor beside me, chunks of metal zinging in every direction and underlying bracing bars sprouting like plants. The carbine clattered from my grip. The slug thrower hit me again and I fell back, over the wreckage and crashed to the floor. I saw a bulky shape moving forwards, cleared the HUD and realized it was someone in a heavy power suit. I tried to rise, drawing one sidearm, but the figure closed horribly fast and slapped the weapon from my hand. A motorized and heavily armoured claw then reached down, grabbed my upper arm and hauled me up. The figure’s visor slid down.

  ‘I’m not going to enjoy this as much as Brack would, but still …’

  I merely registered who faced me and calculated that I didn’t stand a chance against this powered suit. But he’d made himself vulnerable. I jabbed my fingers towards his eyes, driving one into his right eye, though not deep enough. He tried to push me away but I grabbed the edge of his helmet and extended a forefinger into his eye again. The visor shot closed on my fingers as I kept trying. Its power was stronger than expected and trapped the end of my middle finger then, after a brief hesitation and an audible droning, it closed with a crunch. My hand fell away and I couldn’t reach him again. I felt a brief pain and then numbness. The end of my finger was missing and bloody impact foam was oozing from the severed tip. He hurled me against the wall.

  I hit it hard, headfirst, and collapsed to the floor. I rolled, as his heavy boot smashed down where I’d been, leaving a dent in the floor. He swivelled, kicking me with his other boot and slammed me into the wall again.

  ‘You’re so going to pay for that, clone,’ he said.

  His visor stood open again and blood had cut a runnel down from his eye. He reached into his helmet and took out my fingertip, inspected if for a second, then tossed it behind him. I groped for my other sidearm, but it was gone. I had no weapons. No, that wasn’t right, there was something else … He stooped over me and closed a hand around my neck.

  ‘Do you want to try that again?’ he asked nastily.

  His look of surprise was satisfying as I grabbed the edge of his helmet and jammed my fingers in between it and dropped my package near the side of his face. The visor snapped up again, forcing them to the top, but this time I managed to extract them without losing part of a digit. After a brief pause, precisely three seconds long, a dull whumph ensued and his armoured form shuddered, then smoke and a fine red spray issued from every joint, and his armour froze. A moment later, his visor slid open again, and a minced smoking mass of flesh, shattered bone and cooked brain dropped out.

  ‘Hey!’ someone yelled.

  I struggled to free myself from his hand but the damned thing had locked solid around my neck. I now had a view into the chamber where they kept the prisoners. Marcus stepped into the corridor: he must have climbed the fallen walkway and opened fire with every function of his multigun. The end of the corridor, where Frey’s companions had clustered to watch the show, simply disappeared. Fire and wreckage blew back towards us, Marcus standing in its midst. Then other figures appeared, running heedless into the tangled ruin down there. The prisoners had followed Marcus up and were after some payback. They picked up human remains then hurled them aside and moved on. I just lay watching as they swarmed in from the chamber, filling the corridor in both directions. Marcus shouldered his way through the crowd over to me, pausing to snare my carbine from one of them, then stooped down and set to work on the erstwhile Frey’s armoured hand. He had to snap off two fingers before he managed to get it off me. That somehow seemed appropriate.

  ‘I told them to head for the rim,’ he told me, as he helped me up. ‘I don’t think they will, just yet.’

  I leaned against the wall.

  ‘Are you injured?’

  My body ached and my missing fingertip burned, but I dared not reinstate the HUD display to tell me how badly Frey had hurt me. And even then, the pains began to diminish. As the crowd cleared, I searched for my sidearms, but they were both missing. The prisoners might have been under the influence of the virus, but they hadn’t been so far gone as to neglect useful weapons.

  ‘I probably am,’ I replied.

  He shrugged, as he had before, then headed towards the wreckage, waving for me to follow. I paused and looked back at the gore-lined helmet of Frey’s suit. It had been a long and roundabout route but I’d come full circle, fulfilling one of the promises made to myself shortly after I’d climbed out of that cold coffin aboard Suzeal’s ship.

  We made our way through wreckage, body parts lying where he’d fired his weapon. Beyond it, we found two more corpses and they were in pieces too – the prisoners had already begun exacting their vengeance. We finally reached the entry door to the sounds of a fire fight off to the right. I followed Marcus close along the wall to the turnstiles. The whole area beyond was in chaos and a number of the prisoners lay just beyond the turnstiles. Most were in fragments but one, having merely lost the top of his head, was still managing to crawl slowly along the floor. The soldiers hadn’t kept the prisoners back, and they were now swarming them. Close-quarters combat. Figures struggling. Weapons fire peppering the walls and ricocheting off the floor. Amidst all this, the robots stood unmoving, yet to be given instructions. I saw two prisoners with a mercenary between them, each hanging onto an arm, then tearing one of the limbs off. An armoured man lay nearby, screaming as one of the prisoners eviscerated him. Such scenes played out everywhere, while towards the other end of the tunnel the bulk of the force was in disordered retreat, the prisoners leaping amongst them.

  ‘That will keep them occupied,’ Marcus stated.

  A side corridor lay clogged with mingled mercenary and prisoner corpses. Shrapnel grenades had been used there, turning the floor into a bloody swamp. Around a bend at the end three hid. I opened fire without thinking, following Marcus a moment later, and we left them smoking behind us.

  ‘Where to now?’ I asked.

  ‘Bronodec’s laboratory.’

&n
bsp; As we worked our way towards that destination, the sounds of fighting continued throughout the station, but we managed to avoid it. As we stepped out of a working dropshaft, Marcus remarked, ‘Suzeal has recalled her forces, and Salander has the first of the prisoners coming her way.’ I supposed some of them might not be as intent on vengeance as the rest. Finally the style of the corridors here became familiar. Marcus brought us to a coded sliding door, put his hands against it then dug in the nails of his clawed hand, heaved at it for a moment until something snapped and opened it. He paused at the door.

  ‘Salander’s retreating,’ he said. ‘She has at last understood she cannot win.’

  ‘So she’ll use the escape pods?’ I asked. ‘And go where?’

  ‘Anywhere that’s not here,’ was all he said.

  We stepped into the laboratory.

  Bronodec had been provided with every facility. Equipment packed the place: suitcase nanofactories, nanoscopes, micron and sub-micron manipulators, and nanoforges, as well as matter printing units standing like iron-cowled monks over shifting platens. A casting unit ran out gleaming items I recognized as the covers for thralls. He also had prador thralls racked, each in a chain-glass box. And here too lay their victims.

  Amidst this panoply stood surgical slabs and chairs, autodocs and more complex autosurgeons like upright beetles rendered in chrome and white bone. Three tables occupied one space with three naked people strapped onto them, face down – their skin hue matched those released from the zoo. They’d been cored.

  The backs of their skulls had been cut open, each section hinged over on skin. The backs of their necks and part of their upper backs had been opened too, the vertebrae split and held apart by a series of silver rods. A brain and section of spinal column sat in amber fluid in a clear polymer cylinder beside each table. It puzzled me why they’d been retained. Movement then drew my eye and I saw one of the corpses straining against its bonds. Life continued, but mindlessly.