Africa Zero

by Neal Asher

  I just wondered what forces would be arrayed to prevent me getting back. I needed more of an edge than was usual for me.

  “I require your assistance, Stuka, and that of your tribe,” I said.

  “You have but to ask, Collector. You are no demon to us,” replied the Pykani. I felt a touch of embarrassment at that. In the past I’d let slip that I had been the someone who had resurrected the mammoth and had my status elevated to something angelic as far as the Pykani were concerned. I just hoped they’d never find out who had made them.

  * * *

  A pall of smoke sat in the air above where my forest burned and in that pall flew vultures that had moved in to feast on what charred corpses they could find. The gun ships were absent, which could be a good sign or a bad sign as far as my plans were concerned. When I explained to Gurt he was typically loquacious in giving his opinion.

  “We kill them,” he said, and grinned.

  In the morning we left the river and found a sheltered area underneath a couple of acacias that grew verdant next to a water hole. Gurt lit a fire then went and crouched by the water, still as a heron. I worried about the smoke for a second then dismissed my worries. There was still plenty of smoke in the air. After half an hour Gurt snatched at the water a few times and came back clutching a couple of terrapins. These he opened, beheaded and gutted, then roasted in their shells. The meat had a somewhat adverse effect on him, because thereafter he sat with his stomach grumbling, letting off eructations that were so foul I had to turn off my nose. Perhaps terrapin meat was not the kind he was used to. He had been awfully proficient at cutting up that soldier.

  At midday Stuka came gliding in to see me, which surprised me as Pykani are nocturnal. As he landed on the shore of the water hole I saw with even more surprise that he was wearing tight sunglasses. Things move on.

  “Little vampire,” said Gurt.

  “Yes,” I said. “Not dinner.” Then I went to hear what Stuka had to say.

  “It is unusual to see you in the day,” I said to Stuka.

  “It is unusual to see in the day,” replied the vampire. “Jethro Susan has given us much.”

  “Ah,” I nodded my head. My wife, when she had been human, was protected by the vampires and in turn protected the mammoth for them. What developed went by the name of braided debt. I should not have been surprised at the source of these vampire sunglasses. “Good,” I stumbled on. “You ... have news for me?”

  “We have located them. They are forty kilometres to the east,” said Stuka.

  I pointed to where I thought east might be and Stuka corrected me. He then reached into a pouch at his waist and wordlessly handed me the instrument from there. It was a compass. I turned it over and looked at the initials JMCC etched into the back.

  “Er, thanks.”

  When we set out I gave the compass to Gurt to use, and he seemed to manage okay. I found that no matter how I held it it kept pointing at my power supply.

  We moved at a steady pace through the elephant grass, or mammoth grass if you like. After half an hour we hit a mammoth trail that led in the direction we wanted to go and I naturally speeded up until Gurt began gasping at my side. I slowed to his pace and kept going. He wasn’t built for running distances at speed. This did not matter too much to me as I soon intended to find us some transport.

  Soon we were heading downhill and the grass was becoming lusher and interspersed with other vegetation. Large cycads had been pulled apart by mammoth and an acacia pushed over and stripped of bark. In the shade of this acacia a lone tigon watched us pass, but did not pursue. Unlike their close relatives, lions and tigers, tigons showed enough intelligence to keep well clear of man. I had found that increased intelligence was often a result of genetic diversification.

  We did not catch up with the mammoth, though I guessed we were close when I saw Pykani roosting on the stubby branches of a vine-swamped baobab. It was shortly after passing this tree that we heard the droning of a thruster and watched from cover in the grass as a gun ship rose into the sky and sped away to the east. Through the grass we crept towards where the ship had risen from. Shortly we came upon an area where many trails had been trodden through the grass and concealment was difficult to find. From what concealment we could find we observed three gun ships at rest in a clearing of trampled grass. There was probably a number of such bases scattered all across the veldt. Around these ships was an encampment of the Army of God. There were guards everywhere, and four-man patrols were being sent out or returning as we watched. I signalled to Gurt and we moved back into the grass.

  “I need a uniform,” I said to him once we were out of sight and hearing of the guards.

  “Patrol,” said Gurt, with typical brevity.

  We moved back to the encampment and watched until one of those patrols set out. Gurt eagerly moved at a tangent to intercept them and I followed, willing at least in this, to do things his way. We came upon them fairly quickly and it was only the luck of the tigon’s roar that prevented them seeing us as they all faced in the direction of that sound. Gurt took position behind a cycad to one side of the narrow trail and I squatted in the grass. The four men came between us in a neat and disciplined group. Gurt and I stepped into them simultaneously. I chopped back into the throat of one man then reached ahead, put one hand over the front man’s forehead, and one hand between his shoulder blades, then pushed and pulled simultaneously. I think he was dead before he was even aware of my presence. Gurt felled his two with sharp and very effective blows from the butt of his Optek. The two men dropped soundlessly. He stepped past them even as they fell and brought the butt down on the face of the one whose throat I had chopped. It caved his face in and he started to jerk about violently on the ground, bubbling sounds coming from where his face had been. Gurt looked at him with annoyance, then flipped the man over on what was left of his face, laid his Optek on the ground, then came down with all his weight on one knee into the man’s back. There was a crunch, then more of a crunch when Gurt caught hold of the man’s arms and pulled back hard, putting a right angle in the man’s back. He lay there quivering, much like his companions, but more messily. I decided not to use his uniform.

  After I’d stripped the least-soiled uniform from one of the soldiers and placed his mirrored helmet on my head, I helped Gurt conceal the bodies. He wore no uniform as none would fit him. When this was done I took up one of their Opteks and passed to Gurt my APW.

  “The baobab we passed on the way here,” I said and Gurt nodded in recollection. “I’ll pick you up there,” I said, and headed back to the encampment.

  The three Jungers were without Family markings or any other identification. For a while I thought that they had been passed on to this Army of God, stripped of any way of retracing. I then saw a young man in light-blue monofilament overalls strolling arrogantly across the encampment, a data console under his arm and a cigarette in his mouth. Whatever corporate Family had provided these gun ships had provided pilots as well.

  I noted that one of the ships had sections of cowling removed from one arm and two technicians were working away at an AG motor there. I avoided that ship and headed for the one the pilot was strolling towards. As I walked one of the officers noticed me and quickly headed towards me. He was holding out his hand as if he expected me to stop where I was. I ignored him and kept going.

  “Soldier, stand!” he shouted.

  I stood, not wanting to attract too much attention at that moment. The officer strode up close to me and thrust his face into mine.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he hissed at me, a vicious anger in his face. I thought about making some whining excuse, but suddenly that anger was replaced by a momentary confusion, then shock. He did not recognise me. I was not one of his men.

  “I’m going to steal one of your gun ships,” I said, and drove my fingers full force into his rib cage. The others were too distant to hear the thud as my fingers penetrated between his ribs and into his heart. I c
losed my hand into a fist around a rib, ripping my fingers through his heart, and held him upright in front of me. Blood gouted from his mouth as he tried to say something more. No one saw. We just looked like officer and soldier facing each other and speaking. Unfortunately the pilot was walking in our direction. I was about to curse Gurt’s tardiness when two soldiers on the other side of the clearing turned into screaming pillars of flame and smoke.

  Abruptly there was chaos. Soldiers fired at random into the surrounding grasslands, were running to and fro. I saw the technicians hurriedly closing down cowlings on the grounded Junger. The pilot broke into a run for the ship to which I was heading. I dropped the officer, and shaking gobbets of heart-flesh from my fingers, I ran for the ship as well. No one noticed. The soldiers were too busy firing at the enemy outside the camp who was intent on frying them all. I reached the door to the craft just behind the pilot. He hit a palm reader to one side of the door then turned towards me as the door slid open.

  “What do you think you are doing, soldier?” he asked, every syllable dripping contempt.

  I straight-armed him through the door and quickly followed him in. The door slid closed behind me and I drove my elbow into the palm lock, effectively sealing the door. He lay gasping on the floor and tried to draw his sidearm. I stamped on his wrist then took his weapon away from him. I didn’t want to kill him just yet. While he lay there groaning I reached up, knocked out a ceiling panel and pulled out a ream of optic cable. It was only cable for the computer control systems so there was no problem there. With this I bound his hands behind his back and tied his feet to the bottom of one of the rear compartment seats. Then I stepped into the cockpit.

  “What the fuck are you doing!” he shouted. “You can’t fly it!”

  In the cockpit were three chairs for pilot, navigator, and weapons comp. The latter two could be slaved to the former so the pilot could run all three. In front of the pilot’s chair was a touch console with DNA- and fingerprint-coded pads. All additions and all surplus to requirements. I reached under the console and got hold of another bunch of fibre optics and pulled. The console was mounted on a wide pedestal. I got hold of each side of it, twisted and pulled. Metal ripped and rivets clattered across the decking.

  “Jesu!” said the pilot, perhaps realising then who I was.

  Exposed in the column was the stub of the original fold-down joystick slaved to servo motors. The joystick was a threedee—in whichever direction you moved it the ship moved, the farther you moved it in any direction the more acceleration you got. It also had a button that put the stick into ‘tilt and turn mode’. This was usually used when holding position and strafing an area. I pulled it free of the servos to expose the manual firing button. I had no targeting, but wouldn’t need it at this range. I sat in the chair, pulled up the joystick, reached down past it, snapped off two servos and pushed across two levers. The AG started with a drone and the thrusters rumbled. I looked out through the screen at the running soldiers and the two other craft. A twitch of the joystick had the gun ship turning towards the ship nearest. I pressed the firing button.

  The only things that will stop the blast from a pulsed-energy cannon are powerful ionic fields, and thick ceramal battle armour (the stuff I’m made of, mostly). Ionic fields are normally only installed on large stations. Ceramal battle armour is too heavy for anything that flies. White fire hammered across the clearing and the men in its path were instantly vaporised. That fire traversed one limb of the nearest gun ship, slagging one turret and the motors in that limb, before it hit the cockpit. The cockpit blackened and deformed like a plastic bottle cast into a furnace, then it exploded. The gun ship tilted, and slid sideways trailing fire into the grassland. Behind it the other ship was four metres off the ground with its back to me. Still keeping pressure on the fire button I brought my ship higher. The second ship tried to pull away on its thrusters. I hit one of them and the explosion tilted it while the second thruster drove it round in a circle. Continued fire had it raining molten metal all about. Then it dropped like a brick as its AG went offline. I slagged both its turrets then lifted my ship higher. Bullets were pinging off the skin of my ship by then but I had no fear of them. My worry was of one of those soldiers using an APW. I tilted my ship and continued firing. Men were blown to ash and dirty black smoke rose all around. There was no APW fire but that from Gurt. As instructed he had taken out any soldiers armed with an APW. When I finally took my finger off the firing button there was little but smoke and glowing ground below me. Perhaps some of the soldiers had escaped. I could care less.

  * * *

  Gurt waited calmly under the branches of the vine-swamped baobab as I brought the gun ship down on the elephant grass. I walked into the rear section and stepped over the pilot, who looked at me white-faced and silent. The palm-lock for the door I had to rip away so as to get at the lever underneath. Gurt quickly climbed inside after I had opened the door. He looked speculatively at the bound pilot.

  “No, not dinner. I’ve got to ask him a few questions,” I said.

  Gurt grunted and followed me to the cockpit. The pilot looked at us with stark terror. I hadn’t needed to say that, but it would help with the questioning later. I gestured Gurt to the seat for weapons comp and took the pilot’s chair again.

  “Best we find somewhere secure before some bright spark sends a smart missile or we get a visit from some more gun ships,” I said. “You ever been in one of these before?”

  “Been in machines,” said Gurt, eyeing the screen and controls before him.

  “None of that works at the moment. Let’s hope we don’t need it.”

  I lifted the lunger off the ground then and Gurt gripped his arm rests. At an attitude of a hundred metres I pushed the joystick all the way forwards for maximum thrust. That thrust had us pressed into our seats for a couple of minutes until I eased off. It also had the pilot groaning and swearing from the back. As I slowed the Junger and let it cruise on at a steady two hundred kph, Gurt chuckled. I looked at him and saw that he was now completely relaxed in his seat and was looking at the scenery with interest and pleasure.

  “It’s good up here,” he said.

  I had to agree, but it wasn’t safe. Shortly after he said this the radio crackled to life.

  “Seeker Ten, this is Homeboy, respond,” said a suspicious-sounding individual. I ignored the voice until it went away, which it did, only to return every ten minutes thereafter.

  It took one hour to reach my destination. I’d chosen one of my hideaways that was on route to the JMCC complex. I had considered not stopping at all, but felt I was pushing things as it was. To get to the complex in this ship would take me five hours and in that time I felt there was certain to be a reaction from whoever my enemies were. I needed a little unsubtle up-cannoning to get me through, and the thing about being as old as I am, is that you’ve had time to prepare, for just about anything.

  I brought the ship to the base of a cliff that had been shoved up by the Great Convulsion, and traversed along it. It took another quarter of an hour to find the section of cliff I was looking for. I’d burnt meaningless but distinctive marking in the rock. I’d poured dyes in the soil all around and planted the area with dwarf water oaks. My sense of direction and of place had been as bad then as it was now, hence these preparations.

  With a thought, I activated a signal device inside my chest as soon as we were in the area. A round buttress of cliff revolved, shedding trees a couple of centuries old as it did so. The entrance exposed was sufficiently large to accommodate the gun ship. I flew it in to the darkness and brought it down. As I did this the revolving buttress closed behind me and lights came on all around. I pointed out of the cockpit screen at the object resting only a few hundred metres away on the stone floor.

  “No more flying?” Gurt asked.

  “Too dangerous,” I said. “It’s a Family I’m up against and they’ll have gun ships with pulsed energy cannons, and smart missiles. This old girl—” I slapped
the steering column. “—would end up in very small pieces if I was to take it out.”

  Gurt grunted and looked out at the tank. It was an ugly indelicate machine. Everything about it was heavy and solid. The tracks were three metres wide and half a metre thick. The tank itself was a boxlike slab twenty metres long by ten wide and five thick. Its main guns were pulsed-energy, like the Junger, but it also had a missile launcher, small automatic antipersonnel machine guns, a nice napalm slinger, and a rear turret that operated on a carousel system so I could call up any of a selection of eighteen other weapons. All a bit over the top, but I’d been updating the thing (and its various cousins) for seven hundred years, and there was little I had not thought of. It also had limited and a couple of thrusters at the back. It could hop. The best thing about it was that it was made of ceramal battle armour and had an ionic field projector.

  “We are going to have fun,” I said, and stood up.

  As we went into the back of the gun ship I squatted by the bound pilot.

  “Now, which Family are you a member of?” I asked him.

  He just stared back at me, white-faced and defiant. I reached down, got hold of his shattered wrist, and gave it a squeeze. He yelled, but refused to answer my question. Gurt moved up behind me.

  “If you hang them by their feet they don’t faint when you skin them,” said the sauraman. It was the longest speech I had heard from him.

  “I know,” I said, “but sometimes they die before you can get answers.”

  “Was never after answers,” said Gurt.