The man sneered at him. ‘Where your colleagues are is no concern of yours, prisoner. You are in deep trouble. Just be very cautious with us, because you are about to have a further judgment passed on yourself. You have interfered with a peaceful Games Board school display, which resulted in the loss of four non-armed craft and the damage of a System Airship. Don’t worry, prisoner, we will track down every existing transmission of the video of that incident within a few hours, and it will be only our side of the story that is told. I will see to that myself, once I have passed judgment on you. In fact, why wait? This woman is, as far as I am concerned, Jan Wester and no one else.’
A defiant Sirius walked up behind them. ‘Director, you are mistaken. This is Clarissa Jammess, the industrialist who left her home, stating that she would go on a long adventure, some ten years ago. Your actions have resulted in the death of a desired entity.’
The dapper little man spun on his heel to face her. ‘So, Specialist Sirius, you have chosen to join us. You and your faction are out of order in this matter. This is solely my judgment.’
Sirius grimly replied. ‘I am broadcasting, director. Perform the second tests for all of us to see.’
‘That is not required. Sirius, I command you to stop broadcasting. If you do not, I’ll personally sever you across the hips, then cut your all-precious genitals out, make you eat them and put you back in a machine! Do I make myself clear? Expeditors, prepare to execute the prisoner on my command. Afterwards, you will find and destroy his pets.’
*
Two
Marko had had enough.
He sped up to the fullest extent of his capabilities, pulled his secret diamond garrotte from its concealed housing in his belt, stepped sideways, lopped the forearms off the Expeditor to his left, pushed off her, and somersaulted over the top of the one to his right — who was moving as if in treacle — sweeping the microscopically thin blade downwards through the base of the neck of that unfortunate, removing his shoulder blades and exposing his spinal column.
He landed, snapped the garrotte tight, then lunged forwards, sweeping upwards, removing parts of the upper thigh muscles of the director, then his genitals, including a large portion of his pubic bone and, continuing upwards, taking off his hands as well. Marko stepped aside from him, spinning around as the returning Expeditor unholstered her pistol, and flung the garrotte with its heavy diamond ends like a bolas, severing her legs out from under her. He ran and seized her weapon as it flew from her hands, then allowed himself to slow down to normal speed.
They were all on the floor and out of the fight but just to be sure he roughly searched them for any other weapons. Blood and body parts littered the deck. After a few long seconds thinking about it, he left their recording units still attached to their heads and activated one of the needles in his left hand, administering a nanote drug that overwhelmed each one’s pain suppression system.
Sirius stared in a state of shock and said in a flat, fearful voice: ‘They will kill you now, Marko.’
Marko glanced at her. ‘They were about to do that anyway, Sirius. Are you with me or against me?’
The ashen-faced woman ground out a reply. ‘I am more useful to you alive — and a long way away.’
He snarled at her. ‘Run then. Run now and head down, not up. I am not finished here. In fact, I should really slice and dice you as well, Sirius. I do not trust you. You are up to your eyeballs in this action.’
He marched across and seized her, twisting her face around to his. She looked at him as if he was the devil as he continued. ‘The only reason I am not gutting you is because I want you to take a message to your handlers, dog. Tell them to watch the shadows very carefully, as I am coming for each and every one of them.’
She started crying. ‘You know that you were recorded and broadcast from the time that you arrived back at the aerodrome, don’t you? My faction was responsible for that because we knew you would fight and I hoped it would gain you the public support that it has. Don’t kill me, Marko. I am helping you! I had the boys’ and the doctor’s images altered so they will not be recognised as I know that is what you would want. The public will support you, Marko. They love this crew and ship, as well, and they fear the Games Board. Alive, I can help you. The only things we do not know are what happened inside Stephine’s ship. The broadcast was blocked. Please don’t kill me, please, Marko, please.’
He could see the desperation in her eyes, but did not dare speak. He grabbed her by the back of the neck and the small of her back, and then roughly pushed her up against the access door to one of the escape pods, forcing her inside. He opened the external control panel, brought up the planetary map, located the centre of the ocean on the planet below and tapped it on the screen and then launched the pod. He strode back to the fallen Games Board personnel.
Their suits had sealed off their wounds, but they were still in agony. Marko grabbed the director’s head, lifting his face towards his.
‘I shall ask you again, director. Where are my colleagues?’
‘Go fuck yourself.’
Marko felt a black rage building. ‘Very well. That would be entertaining, but I think it would be more fun to fuck you up a bit more.’
He rolled him over, grabbed the back of his battledress, lifted him and walked across to where the garrotte lay on the deck. Using it, he sliced the back off the man’s skull, exposing his Soul Saver, which he took out and placed in his pocket. Working quickly, he then dragged them all into one of the larger escape pods and launched it.
Playtime continues, he thought grimly, asking through the crew comms, ‘Glint, have you located everyone?’
The reply came quickly. ‘Yes, I have. In the mess room. They are being guarded by two Expeditors. They are a little battered about. It would seem that the Games Board reverted to old-style brutal interrogation techniques.’
Marko barked. ‘Disarm them.’
‘Can I kill them?’
‘No. Just disarm them, Glint. Patrick. Patrick, can you hear me?’
He ran over to the hangar deck’s arms cote and grabbed a carbine, then a long battle knife. He loaded the carbine on the run, placing the additional magazines against his suit, which held them fast, and said again, ‘Patrick, can you hear me?’
Silence is never a good sign, he thought. He ran as quietly and as quickly as he could to where Topaz normally worked, and found him in pieces scattered around the medical suite. His rage boiled over again and he sprinted up the spiral staircase, meeting one of the Expeditors cautiously coming down. Marko just reached out with one of Veg’s beautifully simple, lethal swords and sliced him through the neck. The head, a shocked expression still fixed on its face, bounced a few times off the wall and then down the stairs when he booted it really hard, blood still fountaining from the collapsing body. On a whim, he sliced the Soul Saver from that one as well.
As he rounded the corner, there was the flat crack of Glint’s linear rifle and Marko was just in time to see bits of arms and hands raining across the mess. Glint had taken his instructions literally. He had obviously lined up the weapons’ arm of each Expeditor and blown it off with one shot. Everyone else from Basalt’s crew was there. Harry looked the worst, but still very alive and very angry.
‘How many of the shits came on board?’ Marko called out.
The major answered. ‘Ten. Four went down to meet you. Two are on the bridge. These two here, plus one just went down the stairs. The last one is in the garden smashing plants. And somewhere on board is Sirius.’
Glint was working his way around the room, cutting the bonds that held his comrades to chairs. As soon as they were free, Jasmine and Lilly sprinted from the room, heading up to the garden deck, with Jasmine taking Marko’s sword from his hand and Lilly snatching the carbine from his back as they ran past. He checked the others, then ran after them, while the crew made for the nearest arms cote. As Marko arrived in the garden to see devastation and ripped-out plants, he heard the most bloodcurdling
scream he ever had. A few seconds later a very grim-faced pair of amazons appeared, nodded at him and went to find the others.
Marko walked around another corner and looked into the gardens, then looked down the rows of damaged plants to see the slowly twitching, handless body of a naked male impaled on a garden stake. It sounded as if he was choking so Marko left him to his impending death, deciding to take his Soul Saver later.
He made his way farther up the spiral staircase until he was on the electronics and stores deck. Patrick did not look very well either; although he was still functioning, a great deal of his faculties had been ripped away, explaining why Marko had not been able to hear him.
Marko did not have long to wait for the rest of the crew. The major was not carrying a weapon, and Marko soon saw why. Michael’s fingers had all been crushed and his bare toes were in the same shape. Fritz could not talk as his jaw was broken and everyone else appeared to have been whipped, their skin torn and shredded in parts. Everyone was only wearing underwear and they had murder in their eyes.
‘Just as well you arrived when you did, Marko,’ the major said. ‘They were about to start gang raping every one of us. That was their next act of degradation. And that absolute bastard, Sirius, just watched and recorded everything done to us. I hope you dealt with that director, Marko. But the horror creature I really want to get my hands on is the producer, who is on the bridge. Door’s locked, I see.’
Marko curtly nodded. ‘Yeah, well, I have the director’s Soul Saver in my pocket, boss. You can talk to him yourself when you feel up to it. Jan’s gone, but I suppose that you already know that. No doubt they told you.’
They nodded sadly as he asked, ‘Where is Flint?’
Harry slowly spoke. ‘Don’t know, Marko. We were invited up from the planet one by one, supposedly by the boss, and found these bastards waiting for us. Flint vanished as soon as our comms were stripped from us. They also hit us with a cocktail that suppressed our med nanotes. They are from a faction of the Games Board which was behind the attack on us at 27’s chromium mill. This was payback as far as they were concerned.’
Marko’s rage built to new heights. ‘Flint? Can you hear me?’
The mechanical answered immediately. ‘Yes. Marko. I am on the bridge, staying close to the producer. They are very annoyed that Patrick was damaged as they cannot access the internal video systems, so they do not know what has happened. Patrick is playing dumb. He is damaged, but actually disseminated himself though other parts of the ship a long time ago. Just tell him when you are ready and he will open the doors. I shall distract the producer on your word.’
Marko walked to the door with Harry on one side and Jasmine on the other as she passed him a combat shotgun. ‘Now, Flint!’
The doors slid open to reveal a falling producer, bellowing in pain and anger, and a startled Expeditor, who took three blasts from their shotguns, effectively shattering his armour, and filling him with dozens of six-millimetre holes. He crashed against the bulkhead then slid to the floor looking very dead. Marko walked over to where the producer had gone down behind one of the consoles to find that Flint had severed her Achilles tendons and was now perched on her face with two of his arms deep inside her ears.
‘I can reach her Soul Saver from here if you wish, Marko.’ Flint said. ‘Very nice to see you and I am so sorry to hear about Jan.’
Marko snarled. ‘Do it!’
The producer’s eyes bulged as her body went rigid, then her legs and arms started pounding the floor as her brain died. A few moments later he had another pair of Soul Savers to add to the collection.
The major wasted no time hobbling over to his command pod. ‘Battle stations, people. Time for payback. Could someone put my helmet on for me, please?’
Marko frowned. ‘Flint said that Patrick was playing dumb and that he is functional, boss.’
‘Yeah I know, we set him up like that. Patrick, bring everything online. Rotate very slowly until the primary weapon is bearing on the Games Board frigate. Fritz, you are on comms. Get our neural backups working now. Harry, I need you here on the bridge. Everyone else suit up and get to your fighters.’
They raced down through Basalt. Marko grabbed the two remaining Expeditors left alive from the mess, untied and marched them down onto the hangar deck. ‘You have one chance only to see this day out,’ he told them. ‘Get that reader and tell me whose body that is and make sure you broadcast to the Orbitals.’
One of the men sneered at him. ‘You are a dead man walking. Why should we help you?’
A horribly dark smile appeared on Marko’s face. ‘Look around, lots of blood and severed bits, oh, and I have these. If you do not want to join them in an electronic soup, being tortured until you go completely insane, you will do precisely as I say.’
They took one look at his bloody glove with the iridescent dark green Soul Savers in it, gulped, and immediately did as he asked. As soon as they had confirmed the Soul Saver in Jan’s remains as that of Clarissa Jammess and broadcast the information, he bundled them into an escape pod and sent them planetwards. He then lifted Jan’s remains from the cold deck and, wondering what he should do with her, standing staring down at her, he started to cry again. Glint arrived with Jasmine and Lilly. Glint walked up and, leaning against him, quietly gave him a hug.
Jasmine gently took Jan from Marko. ‘I’ll take her, Marko. Fight now, weep later.’
She walked out of the bay and returned emptyhanded a few moments later. He nodded at them both, turned, and went on board Blackjack. ‘Tux, get Blackjack to show me the weapons status.’
The suit said, ‘Talk with Blackjack yourself, Marko.’
Marko looked up. ’Blackjack?’
A very fast voice answered, at the extreme edge of his comprehension.
‘Get to your Sledgehammer, Marko. We fight in formation. Where you go, the Lilly, the Jasmine and I will follow. Indicate a target and we will deal with it. Leave Glint with me. He is safest here. I have already jacked Nail into the system. I compliment you on their design. Inspired.’
Tux wasted no time in folding down into the seat and they slid up into Sledgehammer. As he was being locked down, the controls were coming alive, as they had already launched through the airlock. He looked across and saw that Basalt’s new reactive skin was taking on the look of whatever was behind it in line of sight, although in Marko’s HUD Basalt’s solid form was still showing. He took control of Sledgehammer and dropped away from the side of Blackjack. His tactical display immediately started plotting targets as a dozen small spherical vacuum-capable fighters started to pull away from the Games Board frigate towards Basalt. Marko had no time for the pleasantries of mano-a-mano and told Blackjack to deal with them.
The response was dramatic. Something small, deep cobalt blue and horrifically fast flashed across and detonated in the midst of the enemy fighters, vaporising the closest and shattering the others.
‘What the hell was that?’ Marko yelled.
Jasmine answered. ‘Fritz, while you were on the planet, became bored and created a new smaller version of the Compressor while still composing music. Said the idea came from 1990s electronic! He calls them Cobalts. Unfortunately, he only had time to build a few. Blackjack just used the one allocated to her.’
Basalt was now turning quickly as a clutch of anti-ship missiles leapt from the Games Board ship. Basalt countered with the central spine rail gun spitting a stream of shells, which chewed the entire front portion of the frigate to pieces. More fighters were upon them as the remaining missiles all detonated some distance away; they were picked off by Basalt’s lasers and rail guns. From the corner of his eye Marko saw one of the antimatter engines hit, taking out a third of Basalt’s main propulsion. The other Cobalts must have been fired as suddenly very large pieces were vaporised from the enemy frigate’s hull with the internal atmosphere escaping uncontrollably. The remains of the ship started to tumble.
Everyone targeted individual fighters with their mi
ssiles and guns, steadily wiping them from the sky. Marko dived down between two, firing a high-acceleration missile at one as his belly gun chewed the propulsion system off the other. The missile hit the nose of the other, destroying its weapons, so it was of no further interest to him. Sledgehammer, with its central ring control, was much faster to respond than the enemy fighters, but Marko was watching his countermeasure magazines emptying very quickly.
A proximity warning blared as he saw four small missiles rapidly descending on Sledgehammer. He rolled hard, climbed and then flicked over and dived against another fighter, passing so close that the top of his canopy gently brushed the upper surface of the fighter, and as soon as he felt the contact he dropped a pair of flares directly among its fuel tanks, with the resulting explosion damaging the pursuing missiles as they had got that close.
The major now yelled, ‘All craft break away and dock. We are leaving, as two more frigates are inbound. You have three minutes.’
They punched out, smashing a few more fighters before turning and running for Basalt. Marko’s displays showed that they had all taken damage, with Julie unable to maintain control of her Skua. He looked across and envisioned her inside Blackjack, and the ship reacted, sweeping up under her and irising the whole top deck open to envelop the Skua. Jasmine was missing most of her port wing and Lilly was losing power, as they tried to accelerate to catch Basalt. Marko looped over the top of Lilly, rolled, punched a few extra holes in a very tenacious GB fighter who obviously did not know when to quit, flipped over on his back and then rammed Sledgehammer into the rear of Lilly’s Hanger, pouring on the power.
They only just made it onto Basalt’s hull, with Minh Pham actually crashing against the clamps, because his Skua had also taken that many hits as to be only barely controllable. Marko looked across into a gaping hole in the side of his cockpit to see his friend waving and giving him a thumbs up. Marko grinned and thought, Tough bastard!
Crystal Venom Page 24