One Man's War

by Steven Savile

  “I hope you’ve got a plan for how we get out of here,” I said as Fate’s eyes opened wide—impossibly wide—and his jaw dropped open. I looked down and saw the arc-blade protruding from Auster’s stomach. One of Auster’s goons had rammed it through him and her, opening them wide. He lost his grip on her. She slumped, sliding off the end of the blade. Fate sank to his knees.

  I stared at him as he fell forward, landing on top of the woman.

  Then there were three.

  Three people trapped in the middle of hostile territory, two corpses at their feet, ten very angry men around them intent on fulfilling their mistress’s last order. Ten men. Three of us. Forget all of the Sleepers surrounding. It all came down to ten men. And against ten men I’d back us any time.

  I reached down, drawing twin blades from the sheaths in my boots, and threw them hard, end-over-end into the throat and stomach of the two men closest to me. Brutal. Efficient. No hanging around waiting for them to act first. We needed to get out of there. Now it was three against eight. And it was about to get a lot better as Martagan and Swann went into action.

  She was lightning fast—and deadly, moving with grim economy of movement and absolute body control. The three men in front of her didn’t stand a chance. She pulled one of the blades out of the throat of my victim even as he slumped, and rammed it up under the chin of one of hers, then using the handle as a bracing point, ran up the man’s corpse and launched herself at the two men beside him. They were dead before her feet touched the marbled floor again.

  And then it was five and Swann was using the incredible strength of his exospine to crush the life out of two men at once.

  Less than five seconds had passed since Fate had died.

  We didn’t have time to think about it. We didn’t have any kind of fancy plan. The three of us left standing had come in here expecting to make a play for Aldus Keyes and were relying on our contact from Akachi to get us out of there. Without Keyes, we had nothing to barter with.

  Fate had well and truly dicked us.

  Even so, we couldn’t leave him in here and let them turn him into one of those Sleepers. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. So, while Martagan and Swann finished clearing the room, I gathered our erstwhile leader into my arms and figured our best bet was to walk out the front door. After all, our credentials were all good. We were meant to be here.

  We’d worry about what happened next assuming we got out of here.

  Part Three

  Twist Of Fate

  And that’s how we got here, a cemetery in the heart of GenX territory, a red dot in the center of my chest, the rest of my crew dead.

  Okay, I’ll admit, I’ve been a little economical with the truth. That’s not exactly how it is. I mean it is. Obviously, I wouldn’t lie to you, but hanging around with Fate all these years has made me one cautious son of a bitch. You don’t walk into a situation blind. That’s stupid. The truth is I’d thought long and hard about coming here. I’d carried Fate out of that place with my bare hands, I’d said my goodbyes when it mattered. This, the rest of it, was all window dressing. I’d decided to make a pilgrimage back to where it all began, where we first met, and raise a glass to the old bastard, but that would have to wait. Right now there were more pressing things on my mind, like dying all over again.

  It really was a last-minute thing to turn up in person, but I wasn’t the guy beneath the boughs of the weeping willow in the shadows of the old crematorium furnace. Well, I was, in so much as it looked like me. The shadows helped complete the illusion, meaning no one would see through the hologram. I’d had a bad feeling about this since the moment Swann told me it was happening. The crew gathering so close to GenX, and so soon after the botched blackmail attempt, was just asking for trouble, so I’d taken precautions. If I’m running a hit I like to be in place three hours before things are meant to go down, so figuring other people think the same way, I decided I’d get there three hours before the earliest arrival, meaning I’d been in place before dawn to bury the holographic projector and test the distances on the remote trigger. It was good for four hundred meters. In a cramped, overcrowded, stinking metropolis that was half a world away. I wasn’t dressed like a Bleeder, either. I was invisible. Not literally. I was wrapped in the layers of invisibility that the filthy coats upon coats held together by the dirt so deeply ingrained in them that being one of the city’s disenfranchised conferred. I looked like a tramp. No one bothered with the homeless. They were just there to be ignored. It had all started when the city had cut off water to one hundred and fifty thousand people’s homes, then cut the power, driving them out because the corporations wanted to build more hi-tech facilities and needed the land those houses were built on. They weren’t lucky enough to be able to fight back. One thing I’ve learned since my family was turfed out; it’s impossible to fight back from the outside. You need to be on the inside, or you’re nothing.

  That’s my secret. My back story. The stuff no one knows about me. Well. Not no one anymore.

  I remembered Fate had used that hologram device back in Akachi, so I made a detour on the way here, hitting his pad on thirty-second floor of the Wan Chai plaza to scavenge a few death goods. I figured I was owed. I’d snagged a few of his other more interesting toys, too. It was a pity to let them go to waste. It was weird being in there on my own, especially because nothing had changed. There were still take-out cartons in the trash. An upscale sushi and sashimi joint from across the plaza famous for exotic takes on traditional Japanese recipes. Expensive. I remember thinking that at least his last meal had been an extravagant one.

  Turns out I was right to be suspicious. I looked down at the screen in my hands, which was running a feed from a couple of cameras I’d set up around the cemetery, enabling me to check for heat sources and identify the players GenX had sent in to end us once and for all. I was banking on the fact that cutting the power to the hologram would make it look like I’d fallen to their bullets and that they wouldn’t come to check the deed was indeed done. The red dot in the center of my doppelgänger’s chest didn’t waver.

  I smiled as they killed me.

  It was a peculiar experience watching myself being taken out.

  I watched the clean-up from my hiding place. It was sloppy. And I was half-right, they didn’t worry about checking if I was actually dead, but they did check the others, kind of. They bundled Swann on top of Lisl Martagan in Fate’s open grave and shoveled the dirt back in on top of them. They came looking for me, of course, and saw the thick trail of blood I’d laid down that morning. It wasn’t perfect, but the blood was real, and genetic testing would prove it was mine. I’d been tapping my veins every day since we’d escaped GenX. What can I say, I’m one tricky bastard, too. And it’s a good thing I am because their point man did indeed check the blood to confirm my identity. Maybe they weren’t completely hopeless amateurs after all.

  I’d made sure there was enough blood that even a grunt would be able to tell the wounds were fatal.

  But that wasn’t enough.

  Without a body, they’d never fall for the gag.

  I needed them to believe I was dead.

  About thirty seconds ago, Marco Guerra had become a ghost.

  So, they followed the blood to the next part of my illusion.

  It’s all about misdirection, giving people visual confirmation of what they already believe. They thought I was dying, too weak to flee on foot, clinging on to consciousness before the big sleep. But I needed it to end without access to my corpse. And that meant going out with a bang.

  I’d hacked my way into the computer system controlling my car; it’s not difficult to do. People assume these little personal computers that run our lives are so sophisticated, but in reality, the only thing they’re really interested in is feeding raw data back to the corporations about our driving habits, our eating habits, places we go, how long we stay, that kind of thing. It seems innocuous enough, it’s just metadata after all, but think of it
this way: you drive to the docs, then your phone call is to a number registered to a clinic that specializes in abortion, and bingo, the corps know to hit you with all sorts of targeted ads as you move through the city depending on which lobby has fronted up the most cash you’ll be bombarded with pro-life stuff or pro-choice, you’ll see happy families and ads for diapers and formula or you’ll see glimpses of a better life with none of that stuff in. So, once I was in, it wasn’t difficult to rig it, so I had a remote control and a C4 under the hood. All I had to do was drive the corpse I’d prepared earlier into the cemetery wall and press the big, red, shiny button to blow the thing sky high and bingo, they’d got the crispy-fried corpse they wanted, with DNA proof it was me inside that burning wreck.

  They watched me burn.

  They didn’t check it was me inside there.

  Why would they?

  And just like that, I was a ghost.

  Or, more accurately: just like that, I was a revenant.

  Because I was going to avenge my crew.

  I waited a long time before I broke cover.

  Patience is a bitch, but you need it in this business. A lot of it can be simply sitting and waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

  I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t hit any of the joints the old crew would normally be seen, not if I wanted to stay dead without actually winding up six feet under. I needed a bolt hole. In this case, a bolt hole that wasn’t five star, didn’t have room service and corruptible maître d'hôtel’s willing to sell me out to the highest bidder. Not that any respectable establishment would have let me in dressed like this. No, I needed to take a walk on the seedy side of life. Go places I wouldn’t be recognized. Buy myself some time through anonymity. I’m not proud. I don’t need the finer things in life to feel complete. A full belly is about all I need. I needed to be clever. I couldn’t risk using any of my old—and very traceable—sources of finance, either. No credit card spending. From now on in it had to be all cash all the time. Nothing that could be traced back to Marco Guerra.

  One thing I knew for certain, though: I couldn’t do this alone. I couldn’t go up against GenX by myself. One man can’t bring down a global corporation the size of that monstrosity. It’s just not doable. With a global population upwards of sixteen billion during the last census in 2150, we’re talking about eight billion workers out there, probably one billion of them in the pocket of GenX. One billion people. We’re also talking about a lot of hungry people without steady income who’d do pretty much anything for a sniff of the almighty dollar. You can’t hide from that. Not for any length of time. Not if they’ve actively labeled you public enemy number one. I needed to put a new crew together, but I couldn’t use the one thing I had going for me: my reputation.

  Sometimes it sucks to be me.

  But I’d still rather that than be Swann, Martagan or Fate right now.

  So I found a low rent flea pit on the edge of the vast sprawl. It offered basic net facilities, nothing fancy, but meant I could jack into the system and put out feelers, see if there were any names out there I recognized looking for work.

  The first one I found was Rowel Gant.

  Gant is a hard ass. He’s the kind of man you want at your side if you plan on walking into Hell to take out the Dark Lord himself. He’s the only man on earth the Devil is pissing himself about facing down in those fiery pits when he finally passes on. I found him in bed with a couple of Desi whores in New Delhi. He wasn’t pleased to see me. It was a gun in his pocket.

  I’d only met Gant a couple of times in my life. Both times we’d come up against each other on other sides of a gig. Both times I’d come away feeling very lucky to be alive. I had three scars thanks to him. One of them split me from stem to stern. That I walked away from it was a miracle and in no small part down to the fact that Swann was every bit as crazy as Gant.

  “You look in bad shape for a dead man,” Gant said, muzzle of his AC 17 aimed squarely at my balls. I felt them shrink up inside me.

  I scratched at what had become my scruffy grey beard. “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t think so. Talking to you is liable to get me killed.”

  “True. But I don’t know who else to turn to. I’m putting together a new crew.”

  “Why the fuck would you want to do that?”

  “I’m moving into the revenge business.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose. You’re not content with being alive, so you’re going out of your way to make sure you end up dead all over again.”

  “Something like that. We were set up. My team was murdered. You wouldn’t take that if it was your crew.”

  “No. But then, I’d probably be the one who murdered them.” He wasn’t joking. He was a very disturbed man. Which was exactly what I needed right then. “How much you offering?”

  “I’ve got some cash stashed from before, but the minute I try and lay my hands on it it’s going to set off all sorts of alarms, and everyone will know I’m still alive.”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “A couple of million, give or take, plus assets.”

  “My, my, you boys really were big business at the end, eh? I’ll take it.”

  “I wasn’t offering it.”

  “I know. But you’re dead. I’ll take it anyway. It’s just easier if you agree first. Let me worry about how I get my hands on it. Consider it my signing on bonus.”

  I nodded. What else could I do? I needed him, and he knew it.

  “I’d have done it for nothing, you know?” Gant said, a couple of days later. “I’ve always fancied a suicide run against one of the big corps. Blaze of glory shit, you know the kind of thing?”

  “Now you tell me,” I said.

  We’d got a lead on a Flatliner who was in deep shit with GenX and looking for a lifeline.

  I wasn’t above pretending we had a chance if it meant we were one step closer to assembling the dream team.

  I thought I was living rough. Mel Kamahi had taken it to a whole new level of desperation. She wasn’t pleased to see us. She hadn’t always been a Flatliner. She’d spent most of her life as a hacker, specializing on the kinds of things likely to get you a very long stretch in a deep, dark, technology-less hole. Her big score had been a hit on Warwulf-Blaze where she’d cleaned out a couple of the commodity broker’s key accounts and made a few very rich friends even richer. Not that they were mathematically inclined to count exactly how many zeroes she added to their already obscene bank balances. It nearly took the corp under, it was that audacious. Of course, it had been an inside job. She’d wormed her way into every nook and corporate cranny laying down a plan to make out like a bandit, crafting a dozen flawless identities she could sell out one by one to misdirect Warwulf-Blaze from the actual crime at hand. She was clever. I like clever people. They’re exactly what you need in your corner.

  In point of fact, she was clever enough to know the ghost and the madman were on their way long before we turned up at her door.

  She also had a piece of information that, all things considered, was priceless.

  Of course, I didn’t believe her when she told me. Not at first. I made her prove it. When she did, I knew there was no way I was going anywhere without her as my intel gather. That woman has mad skills.

  The information?

  It was dusk on the third day. I think it was the third day. It could have been the fourth. Or even the fifth. They all blurred together. I hadn’t slept in I don’t know how long. Since she’d told me, I guess. I didn’t want to believe. I refused to.

  But Randall Fate was a creature of habit, even when he was dead.

  Even when I saw him with my own two eyes, I couldn’t quite believe it. I’d carried him out of there. I’d buried him. Or at least I’d buried someone. Because Randall Fate was very much alive and well and living in Old Tokyo. He didn’t even have the decency to move. He had taken up residence in the Wan Chai tower again. At first, he was simply a thermal blur through the scope, moving about th
e room while I surveilled it from a safe distance across in the belfry of the super church across the plaza. I felt like a voyeur spying on my old life. For the first few hours, I refused to believe it was really him, but ghosts didn’t give off heat signatures. Had it been a big old cold spot, maybe, but the signal I was picking up was unmistakably warm-blooded.

  Even with the intense magnification of the sniper rifle’s telescopic lens, the tint on the tower’s glass meant I couldn’t get a clear sight of the man—not clear enough to identify him beyond a lens-flare of doubt. Not at first. And as tempting as it was to pull the trigger, I knew full well the toughened glass between us was thick enough to stop anything my Zamtech could send its way. Maybe a Predator KVK might penetrate it, but even that was a maybe. Fate was paranoid. Paranoid men didn’t leave themselves open to stray bullets. They took precautions.

  My head was buzzing.

  Was it really him?

  How could it be really him?

  But if it was… did that mean he’d sold us out?

  It had to.

  No matter what I thought I’d seen with my own eyes… no matter the grief I’d felt carrying him out of there… Fate had engineered the whole thing. Somehow. Despite Fate’s miraculous resurrection, my crew was dead. That wasn’t changing. Because that man in there wasn’t the Randall Fate I knew. He wasn’t the man who had mentored us. He wasn’t our friend. He was just the son of a bitch who had sold us out to save his own skin. When he’d come to me pitching the job he’d promised, it would make us richer than god. I guess that meant the payoff he’d engineered for himself made him richer than four gods, never mind one.