“Idiot human man. It is not your praise that pleases me so much as the evidence of you bringing effort to our union. In the year I have known you, you have never before justified your actions to me, and any praise has been spoken through your behavior, not your words.”
“Does that mean you won’t have to kill me quite so quickly? That’s really sweet.”
“Let Chikune insult you,” urged Silky.
I thought she was having a go at me, but I saw the thoughtfulness on her face and suddenly understood. “Yeah, I get it. If you want to break the ice with some people, you talk about children, or sports, or how the wounds are healing. With Chikune you let him insult you. Good call, Silky. This should be easy.”
Chikune had moved off, standing alone at the edge of the room. I walked up to him and invited his bile.
“I knew another man named Chikune once,” I told him. “He was a farmer.”
“More successful than you?” he sneered.
I got the impression that only one tenth of this veck’s brain was talking with me. Where was the rest?
“Naturally,” I admitted. “He had six square miles, a free holding in a place called Korogwe on Earth. Africa, in fact. He farmed exotic botanicals from which he extracted medicinal compounds. On Earth they’ve got some forms of farming down so well it’s cheaper to grow complex organic compounds than to synthesize them.”
“So you claim to know someone with my name. Is this a clumsy attempt at establishing rapport, McCall?”
I shook my head. “I’d rather establish rapport with a bucket of vomit than you. I’m just saying your name sounded African to me even if your pasty face doesn’t suit your name.
“Do you have a point?”
“I don’t get where you’re coming from, Chikune. You have an African name, and yet you practically called me a savage on my first day because my Marine base didn’t speak a derivative of English until the Corps standardized on a single language in the 2380s.”
“You’re such a dumb twonk, McCall. Like I give a shit what language your grandparents spoke.”
Color was flooding into Chikune’s cheeks. I was getting through to him but… It’s a weird thing given my knack for saying stupid things, but now that I wanted to talk dumb on cue, I didn’t know what to say. I went for random facts. “My Chikune knew about as much Kiswahili as I do,” I said. “East Africa speaks a descendant tongue now called ZBL – Zanj Bīn Lugha. Or it did when I was posted there.”
“Idiot man!” he spat, which was a weird echo since Silky had called me something similar a few moments earlier. He seemed about to launch into a tirade, but caught himself. The inscrutable mask reestablished itself on his face. “I see I have underestimated you. Again.”
Crap. And I thought I was being clever.
“I am wise to your provocations, McCall. I want to qualify as a Revenge Squad agent, and I do not care whom I climb over to reach that status. Nothing has changed, other than the flickers of intelligence your wife has kindled within you.”
“You’re wrong, Chikune, something has changed, hasn’t it? This business with the exercise today, and Philby’s little speech – they’ve got you sweating bullets. What’s your story? What is it with you and Volk?”
“I’m sorry. I missed the part where you explained why the hell I should answer your questions.”
“The thing about us two, Chikune, is that I loathe you and if you don’t loathe me back, it’s only because you’re a sociopathic bastard incapable of such an emotion. But that’s a good thing. It means we can speak honestly. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“You told me on my first day here that you want me to find out about Volk. I want that too, but I don’t like being pushed at the best of times, and absolutely not until I know who’s pushing me and why. So if you want me to dance on your puppet strings, tell me your beef with Volk.”
He studied me like a puzzle. He didn’t glare and showed no sign of anger, rather he dissected me, playing around with the combinations of my component parts to see if he could put me back together in a form that suited his purposes.
Then without warning or preamble, he explained.
Whereas I had sought isolation when I reached Klin-Tula, Chikune had tried to start again, to build a new life with new roots. He had an affair with a local woman, who turned out to be a recovering drug addict. According to Chikune’s account, they were perfect for each other. He needed a reason for existence, and she needed the stability and protection from herself and her dealers that he could give her. They fell in love, had children who gave them both renewed purpose, even started a business together after moving far away to a good area of Port Bundy. The bad times were over, until Volk set his drug dealers to expand their client base by targeting lapsed users. They came for his wife one day while Chikune was out in the bay fishing with their two daughters. Chikune had taken his new family to the other side of the planet to escape the bad times, but Volk’s people must have known that his wife had been a dragon’s breath addict, because that’s what her body had been pumped full of when it washed ashore the next day. She had always told him she could never go back to what she was before, and he was sure she had thrown herself off the headland and into the bay rather than go back to that hell. She had probably seen her family in their little boat out in the calm waters, oblivious to her pain, before she drowned herself.
Naturally, Chikune looked for revenge. I know I would have. But Volk caught wind of this and sent a message to back away. His chosen means of communication was the severed head of one of Chikune’s daughters.
That’s when Revenge Squad stepped in. They took his remaining daughter to a safe house in a secret location even Chikune didn’t know, and in return the former Army sub-lieutenant signed up as a Revenge Squad recruit.
That explained a lot about Chikune. He would trample over anyone if he thought it brought him a single inch closer to revenge.
“The part I don’t understand,” I told him, “is given you have so much reason to hate Volk, why don’t you do your own dirty work?”
“I will if necessary. But only if I can’t lead others to do it for me. I’m a hacker, McCall, amongst other things. I know better than most that the closer I get to this matter, the more of a trail I leave, no matter what precautions I take. Volk is a minor player in a much bigger organization, a gang leader who was subjected to hostile takeover. I don’t want to kill Volk and lead his backers to seek revenge on my remaining daughter. And then Philby gave his speech this evening. Holland Philby wants Volk, and for him it’s personal. I don’t want the price of his vendetta to be my other daughter’s head set on a spike outside the camp, a message for me to see.”
“Even if I kill Volk myself,” I told him, “you and I are connected. People may see the link.”
“True. But even in the modern era, even in today’s multi-species society, the universal law of vendetta places great emphasis on whoever’s finger was on the trigger.”
“And let’s not forget,” I added, thinking of the mobile artillery and gunships that blasted Sijambo Farm, “there’s a possibility that if we come after him, Volk might fire back.”
Chikune chilled me with an icy smile. “There is that too.” The smile vanished. “Now that we understand each other, that conversation is closed. But…” His voice thawed a little. “I would speak with you on another matter.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I am curious about Earth,” he explained. “I have no desire to visit, but our genetic jumping off point holds a fascination for me. You were stationed there, and in the Great Rift Valley whence I believe we can all trace our lineage. Did it feel like going home?”
The answer was long, complex, and I wouldn’t share it with Chikune even if I understood it properly myself.
My lack of answers seemed to be enough for him. “Was it really as bad as that?” he asked. “Disappointing, but not a surprise. I suppose even if we all trace our journey back to Earth, the path has been s
o long and tortuous for many of us that if we ever came back it would be as something altered.”
“We’re freaks,” I agreed. “Denisoff is a lobotomized berserker, Conduit the damage control grocer would seem like a little fairy or pixie to the Earthers. The Wolves terrify them, and as for Marines like you and me–”
“I was Army. Not Marines.”
“You know what I mean. They felt threatened by us. The Chikune I met in Africa was generous because of what we had done for the people of Earth, but that kind of gratitude only lasts a single generation. He’ll be dead and forgotten before long. I expect the younger generation hates and fears us. They detest what we have done to the word human.”
“Pity,” he said and took a moment to digest my information. He’d called himself a hacker, and I was beginning to see that he was not merely in search of power, wealth, or revenge. Chikune was a connoisseur of information. “I think it would be best for you if you forgot Africa and the Earth people,” he told me. “Forget the war. Forget your past. You have new battles to fight, McCall. Starting with Volk. Agreed?”
I blanked him and walked away. I’m an awkward veck and I wasn’t agreeing to anything.
Forget your past.
As I weaved my way back to Silky, Chikune’s words haunted me.
Forget your past.
Easy for him to say. He didn’t carry his past around inside his back.
— CHAPTER 33 —
The more the drink flowed, the more I forgot Chikune and his games. Even my hatred for Volk grew hazy, and I began to enjoy the company of my new Revenge Squad comrades. Even Nardok the Typist took an interest in me when we discovered a shared love of equipment nerdiness. Nolog-Ndacu’s leg wounds had placed him in a wheelchair, but that didn’t hamper his party trick of spinning his head around. We gave appropriately shocked responses to his tales of decadence and insane risk-taking. He loved it so much. In fact, I think it validated him. You see, he was an exile from his own people because as they saw it, he had been driven to insane levels of risk-taking by the war. But to a Tallerman, leaving your home without a coat on is considered a psychotic act of self-induced jeopardy. Hanging out with Nolog was a blast. You had to be there.
I liked him. Then he spoiled it by starting to recount a story of the Invasion of Athena. He’d been right in the thick of things as a co-pilot/bombardier of a picket aircraft. He invested his story with nuclear fire, air-to-air combat, the strangeness of his human wing commander, and the mesmerizing charismatic pull of his army group’s commanding officer.
But the CO of his army group had split apart humanity almost to destruction, and I had been at Athena too.
It’s where I lost the Sarge.
Glider troops, Gliesans with their wings encased in armor, swooped down on us as we deployed from our landing vehicle. We beat back the Gliesans with ease, but by the time we regrouped, the Sarge was dead. Simple as that.
I didn’t want to think about it.
I walked away from the huddle around the Tallerman, dragging Silky as if on an invisible leash. These people I was drinking with, they weren’t my comrades any more than Silky was my real wife. They were echoes of the real thing, shadows to comfort me in the last years of my life. The bonds to those who were gone would never fade away, and never leave room for new ones to form in their place.
“Wounds troubling you?”
I looked up into Denisoff’s face. He was different somehow. Almost playful, though in a feral and dangerous way.
“Yes,” I replied. “But not the physical ones.”
His face pinched even more than normal, making him look gaunt, hungry even. Initially I mistook his reaction for anger, but I gasped when I realized I was seeing something in his face I hadn’t seen in a very long time.
Denisoff was hungry all right. Hungry for me.
“Outsiders often mistake my breed for being without conscience,” he told me with just a hint of a slur to his words. “Is that what you think, NJ? Do you think I am capable of mass murder?”
“Yes.” I answered without hesitation. Seriously, was this his idea of a pick-up line?
He leaned close, invading my personal space. He was slighter than me, but there was such power within him it burned as if he were a demigod. My muscles burned in response, desperate to react, though in which direction I wasn’t sure.
“You are correct, NJ. I killed hundreds in the Year of Sorrows. Maybe thousands.”
It takes a lot to scare me. It’s not because I’m brave or a hero who rises above such mundane matters as fear. And if you think I don’t scare easily because I’m stupid, then I suggest you keep that opinion very close to your chest. My youth had been dominated by fear. I had been scared that I would let my comrades down, scared of death, and even more frightened of being seriously wounded. Somewhere along the years my capacity for fear had burnt out like an overworked motor.
Not now. An icy chill ran down my spine, the unwelcome return of an old sensation I thought had gone forever. I was frightened all right. And it was Denisoff who scared me.
His was one of the earliest generations of what would later be called the Human Marine Corps to be unleashed on an unsuspecting galaxy by our alien masters. In those years, the natural human trait for violence had been selectively bred for, and artificially enhanced, to produce units of berserkers who were more of a punishment than a military force. The Year of Sorrows was a genocidal punishment meted out on a planetary scale against the Littoranes, the same bunch of newt-like amphibians as Jo in my recruit intake. Without a doubt, in the years since we had joined the Trans-Species Union, the Year of Sorrows had been humanity’s most shameful moment. I prayed that our Jo had no idea of what Denisoff had perpetrated.
“Violence was a drug,” said the ancient berserker. He’d been watching the horror on my face, drinking it up. “The more I killed, the more I needed to kill. And then killing was not enough, extracting the most fear and pain was the only satisfaction. It felt delicious. Does that make me a monster?”
“You were born to be a monster, Denisoff. Same as I was bred to be a soldier.”
He nodded with approval. “I thought you’d understand. You and I aren’t so very different. Our parents were re-engineered to suit alien purposes. They put things into our heads, brutalized us, brainwashed us, and killed off all but the worst of us. Maybe they relaxed the culling in your era, but if any of my brothers and sisters were found to be capable of mercy, our officers would not permit them to live.”
“Doesn’t justify genocide, Denisoff. A self-aware monster is still despicable if his actions are monstrous. The Earth humans know this. They would tell you that obeying orders can never again be an excuse.”
The assistant squad leader grabbed my shoulders and pulled himself up until our noses were almost touching. His breath smelled of liquor and rich food. “If I were rounded up tomorrow with others of my breed, retrained by Jotun officers and sent off to murder an entire continent – I would do so again. I would loathe every moment even as I flushed with excitement at the prospect of such violence. I could not help myself. They built me for violence and they built me well. The Year of Sorrows was many centuries ago, and yet I still hear the screams every night. You won’t believe me when I say this, but I swear that even in cryo sleep I could not escape. I am still haunted by the shades of my victims.”
“We all have our ghosts, Denisoff.”
“Yours are plainer. The way you froze today, and your attempts to isolate yourself on your farm – it’s not difficult to work out why you did that, NJ. I’m haunted by the ghosts of my victims, you by the ghosts of those you loved.”
I looked away and said through gritted teeth: “Excuse me, Assistant Squad Leader, but aren’t we supposed to be enjoying a party?”
“A party. Yes. Drink, fighting, sex…”
I didn’t like the way the he let that last word dangle.
Mercifully, he continued. “We find release in an excess of sensation because it means we can stil
l feel, while others no longer can. It’s how I hang onto the threads of sanity. How about it, NJ?”
I licked my lips, drawn in and repelled at the same time…
Suddenly a blur of anger pushed the two of us apart. “You insult me,” Silky shouted. “Both of you.”
She hit Denisoff, a strike to his mouth that left a ribbon of blood snaking from the corner of his mouth. He licked it away and his face flushed with pleasure as if savoring a lush memory.
I was so busy watching the berserker that I almost didn’t react when my wife turned and aimed a kick at my balls. I managed a half block but she’d only been feinting and I had no answer when she swept my legs from under me, punching me in the head on the way down.
I landed on my wounded shoulder and bellowed in pain.
Denisoff was grinning, the psychotic veck. “My apologies, Mrs. McCall. My behavior is unacceptable, but you must admit your husband is an attractive man.” His tongue oozed out to lap at the blood dripping down his chin. “Perhaps the three of us could go find some privacy where you and I could explore the possibilities of enjoying your new husband together.”
Silky snapped a kick at our commander’s thigh and he sank to his knees. “I am not Mrs. McCall. I am Sylk-Peddembal.” She slapped him in the face. “And my husband is not a toy I choose to share with the likes of you.”
I was bewildered. A genocidal murderer and an alien were fighting over my body. This was a first. It wasn’t even my body, for frakk’s sake. One half of me was replacement parts and augmentations, and the other half scar tissue. I didn’t know what to do, so I just laughed.
After Silky shut me up with a very flashy spinning kick to my face that I was far too slow to block, I sank to the ground alongside Denisoff.
My wife stormed off, leaving the two of us to lick our wounds, literally in the case of the berserker.
“You have a magnificent wife, McCall.”
“Thank you. I think you might be right.”
“I know I am, which is why you must protect her. Powerful forces are tightening their grip on this world. They have become aware of her and will seek to possess this unique asset. Or deny that asset to rivals.”
After War Page 21