Cyborg (The Deep Wide Black Book 1)

by JCH Rigby

  The Bull’s Head was a real find of a boozer: good beer, an all-day supply of decent food, and a friendly but not intrusive crowd of regulars. We’d been going there for a couple of months, and we felt welcome. Right now, I eyed a waitress as she headed across the floor toward the stairs. There’s a kind of undercroft dining area which tends to be booked out by private parties, so we only got to go down there occasionally. The Roman look was a bit weird, but I kind of liked the nonsense.

  “There you go.” Andy placed a fresh beer on the table in front of me, taking a good pull on his own before wandering over to look at a picture on the wall. “‘Sol, Dominus Imperii Romani’? What’s that all about?” He asked loud enough that I could hear him over the hum of the other patrons. I got up and joined him examining the picture while I cradled my beer. It showed some Roman ruins, with a few guys in robes making dramatic gestures amongst the rubble, and someone dying picturesquely. Officers, probably. Next to it hung another framed picture, this time showing a stone carving of a bunch of men with weird hats, all carrying big sticks and passing a cup around. A couple of them had—haloes? Likely enough, as they were sitting on clouds.

  “Haven’t got a clue. Looks like a pretty dull party, though.” I said after a minute.

  “It means, ‘The Sun, Lord of The Roman Empire.’” A deep laugh as the landlord swung past our table, each big fist full of empty glasses, braided hair swinging behind him like some kind of animal tail. He didn’t slow down, just headed on back behind the bar, grinning. We watched him go, then looked at each other. Andy shrugged and we both retook our seats.

  The Bull’s Head had the weirdest gimmick I’d ever seen. Inside the door, by the stone bench in front of the fireplace, there’s a giant hologram of a bull. It’s a bloody great big thing with a huge head and horns, and every now and then it comes alive and goes crashing about the pub, snorting and bellowing like anything. The first time it happened I nearly took off out the door, till I realized most people weren’t paying any attention as the beast charged straight through walls and tables. Over time I’d become accustomed to it, though it still made me jump if I wasn’t paying attention.

  Luna workers had money to burn, which meant plenty of life: bars, nightclubs, fast-food joints, and one of the sleaziest red-light areas I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing what one-sixth gravity can do to brighten up a live sex act on stage. For the first few weeks the battalion was back at Copernicus the military police delivered half the battalion to the Regimental Sergeant Major’s office each morning. Needless to say, the RSM was not impressed so he managed to find fitting tasks for those unfortunates who fell foul of him. The novelty of spending your off-shifts cleaning out the latrines began to wear off, and we all settled down a bit.

  Copernicus isn’t all sleaze, of course. It’s just, somehow, always seems to be the underbelly you check out first. The locals called the red-light area ‘the Sink Hole,’ and The Bull’s Head sat far enough outside the Sink Hole to stay marginally respectable, but close enough to act as a useful final assault position for squaddies fueling up before a big night out. That wasn’t the plan tonight. Although there’s always a few who’ll spend their whole lives watching porn and drinking beer, most of us calmed down after a while.

  The roster showed the battalions individual companies doing a month each on guard and patrols, training, standby, and rest, so you knew what you would be doing a fair way in advance. Changing the battalion around to make it more suitable for the kind of operations anticipated while we were based out of Copernicus took up a lot of training time; half of each company translated into surface vehicle drivers or scooter pilots, but not us, thank God. The Hunter surface vehicles were bad enough—the little Antelope scooters just looked undignified. I was kept busy turning six new grunts into a team. All adding up to the Andy and I being ready for a few beers.

  LAST NIGHT I'D WOKEN up sweating, staring straight at the walls of my bunk but those were not the walls my mind could see. It saw different walls. Walls belonging to a shopping mall on distant Earth. The one I could see now came straight at me, slowly, in a wave of glass and tiles and crap, a tiny body cartwheeling through the air.

  Before we deployed to Luna we’d all been back Five Side, L5 habitat. The habitat I had grown up on and still called home. I’d rushed for my parents’ apartment, worried sick about how everyone was doing. With L4 gone, I needed to see everyone to believe they were all right. Of course, they’d been panicking about me as well, as parents and siblings do, especially when they knew I’d been hurt, so we needed time to convince ourselves we were all okay. I spent two weeks trying to do all the things you do when you are back home, but I think all I really did was worry the hell out of them what with the dreams and everything. I lacked concentration and I felt tired all the time.

  I’d been too slow.

  THE BULL'S HEAD DID this thing they called a guest beer day, every now and then, and tonight we were in luck. Luna beer is okay, and the stuff from further up the gravity well at L5—and L4, once—always tastes like home and it’s cheap enough, but every now and then the Bull’s Head featured some random Earth beer. It costs like crazy to ship it here but that’s where the whole brewing alcoholic ales thing started, after all, so you don’t mind paying for real quality occasionally. Tonight’s star feature for me was something called Newcastle Brown Ale. Andy preferred some Chinese beer I couldn’t pronounce. Funny how much Chinese stuff we were seeing these days. What wasn’t funny was a single round cost three days’ pay.

  I’d been amusing myself with my beer, pouring a dollop out of the glass only to catch it hurriedly when it occurred to me that I didn’t want to drop it at that exorbitant price. Placing the glass carefully down, a couple of girls came in heading for a booth. So, of course, I clocked the pair of them and spilled beer on the table. A party of shuttle crews were playing dice nearby, diverting the girls’ attention, so maybe they didn’t see me acting like a teenage idiot. Maybe. But the dice game gave me an excuse to look as well. I started watching the girls instead of playing with my beer; I can’t get bored with the way they move in low-G. One of the girls caught me ogling and gave me a flirty little grin. Love it.

  Andy stopped clattering on about something, the silence telling me he expected a response. Reluctantly I brought my attention back from the girls. The brunette was telling her pal a joke; their heads almost touching, they were shaking with laughter. Hope I wasn’t the joke, but make them laugh? It was a start. The girls headed off to the booth they’d chosen and started looking at menus. There was a deafening bellow from the bull, and both girls jumped. I looked at Andy a stupid grin on my face.

  “Sorry, buddy. I missed that.”

  Andy frowned at me, and with eyebrows like his he could really frown when he felt like it. He seemed to think it made him look assertive, I thought it just made him look puzzled. “Yeah, they’re cute, aren’t they?” He said dismissively obviously he had more important things to discuss. “Look, you remember what I was saying the other day?” I liked Andy. He wasn’t the sharpest bayonet in the armory however, he was a straightforward guy and a decent corporal.

  “Oh, that.” I failed to keep the resignation out of my voice.

  “Yeah, that. Like I said, why are we doing this?” Andy leaned in closer and lowered his voice. I bent forward across the table to hear him. We might as well have had a sign saying ‘conspirators’ hanging above our heads. Andy even started drawing table-top diagrams in my spilled beer. “Half the battalion is patrolling miles out in the sticks for days at a time, nowhere near civilization. The other half is out at Hevelius, or else they’re stood down. Nobody’s doing anything useful anywhere near here—just one bloody platoon in the town? It’s almost as if somebody wants us handy, but not too handy.” He looked at me significantly, as if he expected me to say, “Bugger me, you’re right!”

  When I didn’t, he tried again. “Steve, they pulled us back from Earth to look after our own front yard, and now we’re
so far away from everywhere all we can do is react. If Earth First fancies trying to take over a town somewhere, the police wouldn’t be much of a problem for a large enough group. Or they could seize the Mass Driver, which would really screw up the starship program, with us spread out like this, they’d be in control long before anyone does anything about it. Think of the hostages they could take. Why aren’t we all over the streets, looking for them, stopping and searching, targeting people, dominating the place?” Andy stared at me as if daring me to contradict him, but I couldn’t. For once his logic was rock solid. My only chance of getting the conversation back onto something lighter and fun was to placate him.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. We’re not doing a lot in the towns, are we? But come on, Andy, you know the towns are a special forces theme park. All stealth squads, covert cops, and secret squirrel spooks. No regular army operations allowed.”

  Andy shook his head. “No. We’ve all heard that one. Well, okay, there are a few black ops operators lurking around the back corridors, hiding in bins or whatever, hanging off the rooftops and listening in on people. They pull in the odd loon for the cops to knock about. But there’s not enough to make a difference. If there’s a job building up we’ll be bloody lucky to hear about it, and we’ll never prevent it.”

  Despite my best efforts I could feel myself getting sucked into the conversation. “What about these new guys with the enhancements we’ve been hearing about?”

  “What, Sergeant Cyborg and his Superman Squad? Do you really believe all that shit? Faster than a speeding bullet, leaps tall buildings boloney? Think about it, Steve. The way the military specifies stuff we can’t get a vehicle that keeps working, but civilians can buy them off the shelf; never mind combat clothing that fits you, or even a decent pair of boots. If they really are fitting idiots up with built-in brain radios or powered zoom eyeballs or something, imagine what a shambles they’ll be. Half the platoon will be locked up solid because their software’s gone mad, or picking up daytime TV in their heads, or their magic legs will be two different sizes. Forget it. You’d have to be soft as well as simple to let the army do that to you.” Andy leaned back in his seat and took a slug of his beer.

  I regarded him over my own beer my silence acknowledging I couldn’t argue with him.

  "SOLDIER BOY!" CALLED A half laughing female voice.

  “What?” I looked around in confusion searching for the source. Who the hell calls anyone ‘soldier boy’?

  “Hey, crew-cut. What’re you doing daydreaming over there? Shift your butt over here!” My head snapped around locking onto a lithe form waving at us from the dice table.

  I’m not vain, but I swore she meant me. To be on the safe side, Andy and I both ambled across the pub to join the gang around the dice table. Money changed hands left and right. Craps, just as I’d expected, not my game, but I pulled out one of the flimsy little chairs and sat down all the same. I could always bow out after a few throws.

  The crop-haired girl was a shuttle pilot, judging by her coverall badges hovering above a protruding chest. No, really, I only wanted to know her name, and she’d caught me reading it. Nice name badge. She was called Suzy.

  Andy always thought he had the gift of gab, so he cranked up the charisma, shunting his butt next to hers on her chair and leaning in close. She loved it. I settled for watching the game. Maybe one of the other girls would join the crowd.

  Luna craps seemed to be a little bit different from the game I knew. The rest of the players looked like the usual mix of permanent side-bettors talking away full tilt—to the dice, to each other, to their god, to the table—and a few genuine shooters, chasing the main stake. The noise was the regular crap-shooting racket. To one side a keen-eyed group betting on the fall of dice, while they were still in mid-air. On the next throw, I watched as the shooter placed his stake and the side-bettors raised the din level even more. The shooter picked up the dice, and for a moment silence fell. Everyone tracked his hand as he drew it back, shook the dice, and rolled them toward the backboard. As they left his hand the noise started up again, in low G there was time for new bets to be placed as they sauntered through the air. Once they hit the backboard silence fell like a stone. They were Euro-style dice though they seemed lighter, taking a while to rebound and roll to a halt. The shooter got a four with the first die, the other hung on its edge for a long moment before it toppled, painfully slowly, onto its face to reveal a three. A natural. The shooter’s grin nearly split his face, while everyone else started breathing again and shouting.

  Like I said, I’m no good at regular craps so there was no chance I’d be trying to bet on something as weird as that. But interesting? Yeah, you could say so.

  I watched a couple more throws, then I took a turn as shooter and collected a nine. Straight away I tried to make my point again, but I sevened out a couple of rolls later. Like I say, not my game. So, I watched some more while Andy schmoozed Suzy. When he took a turn, she took a sip from her rum and coke, leaned forward, eyes bright with laughter, and covered his stake. He went to throw, we all fell quiet, as the dice flew slowly down the table Suzy knocked her glass over. I tracked the dice as a shower of rum and ice followed them toward the wall, my muscles went rigid as the ice morphed into glass, the dice became a shower of airborne debris and the stakes were flying tiles. The tiny broken body of Molly sailed through the air, at any moment that wall would hit me, and I was way too slow, again.

  A voice calling my name penetrated my walking nightmare. “Steve. What’re you dreaming about? Come on, get a grip. Give us a hand.” Andy looked at me strangely.

  I pulled myself together and came back to the here and now, back to people cursing as their spilled drinks dripped from the sodden table. They were doing that “pick everything up at once, blot the mess, try and save your own drink” stuff people do. The side-bettors sounded off because nobody could agree what bets where covered, while Suzy apologized to everyone. The big, old landlord with the braid came back and helped tidy the mess. Surprisingly, he replaced the spilled drinks free of charge. I guess it kept everyone happy, and the landlord sold a load more as most of us downed the free drink and immediately ordered another.

  What bugged me, though, wasn’t my damp trousers or the spilled beer—the landlord must have hated replacing Earth beer—but the fact that I was still losing focus, and beating myself up with what-ifs. Little Molly kept coming back to haunt me, and I was grateful I hadn’t started to hear her asking me why I hadn’t been faster. If I’d taken Yellow Jacket down, she’d still be alive. I’d had two chances, and I’d screwed up both. The stupid thing was, although I’d not been sleeping well for ages, quite recently I’d been starting to get my head down and keep it down. Somehow my partially successful attempt to forget my nightmares made me feel even guiltier.

  We moved to a booth while the landlord sorted out the craps table. After a couple more rounds Suzy and Andy were pretty cozy, and I was starting to feel a bit out of it. The other two girls from earlier might have been an option, but I’d been counting on Andy for a little support, and now he was totally absorbed with Suzy I was wondering what to do with myself for the rest of the evening.

  I tuned back into the conversation between Andy and Suzy. Andy was trying to impress her with how tough we all were, out there in the Badlands, protecting honest, God-fearing folks from evildoers, out of the blue Suzy started asking him things that were classified.

  “What about these new super-squad guys I’ve been hearing about? You know, the ones with all the attachments and stuff? Couldn’t they do it?”

  Andy was evidently at a bit of a loss for an answer. We’d heard the rumors, too, but I didn’t expect a civvy to come out with them. However, before the silence got awkward, somebody helped me out.

  “Well now, young lady, maybe they could, or maybe not,” a new, but, familiar voice cut in. “Mind if I sit down?”

  We all looked up, and Andy and I leaped to our feet so fast we alm
ost left the floor. Sergeant Major Hassan, our Regimental Sergeant Major, well over two meters tall and massing about 100 kilos. He could have been a skinny dwarf and we’d still have reacted the same way. The Regimental Sergeant Major was top dog in any unit.

  “Corporal Norris, Lance Corporal Arden; evening, boys.”

  “Hello, sir; this is Suzy.” Andy managed to get out.

  The sergeant major shook a puzzled Suzy’s hand and, pulling out a chair, waved us back to our own. I couldn’t believe our bad luck. We’d taken a fancy to The Bull’s Head precisely because it wasn’t on the regular drinking circuit for the senior military types, and we could unwind a bit without worrying too much about who was watching us. Yet here was Hassan, just when a civvy was about to drop us both in it. Over the RSM’s shoulder I could see a couple of the company sergeant majors ordering drinks at the bar and my heart dropped into my boots. There goes my fun night. Just our bloody luck.

  “Delighted to meet you, Suzy. Now, don’t think me rude, but would you be so good as to let me have a quick word with these two boys?”

  “That’s up to you. I don’t see why I should move.” Suzy wasn’t impressed. Andy looked as if he wanted the ground to swallow him, though Hassan was charm personified.

  “No, no. Of course not. No need for that at all. However, I do want a word with them, so I’ll take them back to barracks with me and we’ll leave you in peace.” Hassan held her glare unflinchingly. He had had plenty of experience staring down those who really should know better.

  With an over exuberant sigh Suzy took the hint and, scooping up her beer, did a very good job of stomping off, given the low gravity. We watched her re-join the dice players and, after smiling politely in response to her parting glare, Hassan turned his attention to us.

  “Not to worry, fellas. You’re not in the shit, yet.” An image of dirty latrines came to mind and I could have sworn I got the pungent whiff of disinfectant. “What have you been chatting about, I’m hearing interesting things are being discussed in this little pub?”