by Andy Remic
This novel is dedicated to Jake “Sgt” Simmo – cycling adventurer, cliffhanger, a man with the look of eagles, purveyor of toxic fish and the most unpopular man at the party.
For all the good times; for Pernod Night and afternoons in The Sangar, Glyder Fach and Crib Goch, the joy of the Mezcal worm and Ein Prosit... and for cooking B&S on The Viking Route. Never have I seen a spuke fight so hard for a sausage!
“How many men have been where we’ve been? And seen what we’ve seen?”
No matter what happens, we’re not little men.
Hats on!
First published 2007 by Solaris Books, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX1 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN (.mobi): 978-1-84997-316-8
ISBN (.epub): 978-1-84997-315-1
Copyright © Andy Remic 2007
Cover image by Marek Okon
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
A Combat K Novel
WAR MACHINE
Andy Remic
SOLARIS
Prologue
Terminus 5
She hated scissors: their gleam; their simple function. She laughed, and it was a bitter laugh like a tumbling fall of worlds. There within the maelstrom of her mind—a cold constant, like the elliptical spinning hub of the galaxy—was fury. She lifted the scissors to her face; studied her reflected image. Her eyes filled with tears. Her pale fish-flesh face was streaked with crimson shards; her mouth a bloodless slit.
Contrition bubbled, grew, engulfed her.
She sat on the stairs, one hand on the carpet, weeping.
And knew she would never be the same again.
Machine guns shrieked. Bullets punched the corrugated rust-streaked wall, forcing Keenan to the ground. He grunted, crawling, MPK sub-machine gun sweeping out towards the sun-dappled tree line of the steaming jungle beyond.
The explosion of noise stopped, leaving a metallic song in the air. Keenan stared out from the skewed doorway, face locked, sweat rolling down his blackened skin; his eyes searched for the enemy.
“I can’t believe they spotted us,” whispered Pippa, crawling up beside him on her elbows, commando-style. Her mouth was a grim line, grey eyes suggesting something unholy: a single concept.
Trap.
“They must have been waiting.” Keenan’s voice was a deep smoker’s drawl, smooth, calculating, his words clipped and economic. He blinked lazily in the warm damp atmosphere, like a lizard. “Their presence is damned convenient. This shit only happens when the fuckers are expecting you.”
The corrugated bunker lay semi-submerged in folds of foliage; huge Splay Ferns drifted around the half-buried flanks in the wake of a tree-fractured breeze. Dangling vines from towering hardwoods dragged rhythmically against the bunker’s domed roof. A green half-light illuminated the scene.
Combat K: proficient in infiltration, assassination and demolition were pinned like butterflies to an entomologist’s specimen board. Trapped, the observation post from which they were plotting a meticulous course to the Terminus5 K Series Shield Reactor offered only modest protection. Disabling the reactor would allow a flood of the Quad-Gal’s Peace Unification Army to enter the breach and lock down rogue AI weapons, monstrous Proto Vehicles and covert enemy SandSlags.
Combat K’s mission was pivotal, crucial and now—ultimately—compromised. By accident? Keenan shook his head at an internal diatribe. He doubted it.
“I see them.” Franco had silent-drilled a hole in the metal compound wall using his PAD laser, and eased free the micro-barrel of his Bausch & Harris Sniper Rifle with SSGK digital sights. The weapon sported a rapid single action fire linked to a hairline trigger: a devastating gun in the right hands. “There are four of the bastards.” He spat on the earth floor, glancing right towards Keenan and Pippa—lying vulnerable and coiled by the warped doorway where fingers of sunlight raped by swirling dust pointed arrows of accusation through the pepper-pot interior.
“Shall I take them?”
More gunshots exploded, shattering the ambient jungle chatter and rattling off the roof, from the left this time, and behind. It was joined by the original source—a crossfire—which cut more holes through the wall above the trio in a crazy, spitting zigzag. Hot shavings of curled metal sprayed across the group, scorching exposed flesh unprotected by WarSuits.
Above the cacophony Keenan licked salt lips, annoyed now, and lit a cigarette. “Take them, Franco.” He eased his bulk around the doorway, smoke stinging his eyes, locked his MPK to the tree line and sent a savage sweeping volley of thundering firepower. Bullets scythed the dense jungle smash eating everything in their path. Howls reverberated through deep green. Tracers spat like fireflies.
There came a solitary crack as Franco’s Bausch & Harris rifle discharged; it was a leaden noise, chilling and final, and it penetrated the din of automatic gunfire. That sound meant death.
A digitally camouflaged figure detached from its chameleon-blended surroundings, head exploding outwards in a snapping mushroom of brain and skull-shards as limbs and torso folded up and over into the air as if in slow motion, then slammed in sudden acceleration to merge with the jungle floor. Keenan’s sub-machine gun swung right, targeted by the kill, his bullets cutting showers of sharp chippings from trunks and worming into soft flesh as the hidden soldiers were revealed like a patterned puzzle arranging itself to the human eye.
Keenan crawled to his knees, then gained his feet, and Pippa joined him as they moved across the doorway, weapons juddering, fire blossoming from hot barrels, bullets decimating vegetation with chopping sounds and cutting down the aggressive enemy attack squad in a shower of smashed crimson and pulped bones.
A soldier stumbled forward, gun loose in blood-slick hands, camouflage armour askew and flickering with green sparks of malfunction; he started to raise hands in surrender as Franco’s rifle gave another crack. The soldier dropped. Lay still.
Silence flooded the clearing. Smoke rose from stagnant gun barrels. Keenan glanced left, nose twitching on cordite, and Franco signalled military instructions with his left hand. Clear 12. Five 7.
“If you live by the sword, then you die by the sword,” said Keenan, and placed his boot against the compact dirt threshold of the bunker’s doorway, looking up, over and back in an attempt to locate the second firing group. His gun came up, stocky, black, deathly serious, held in strong hands that had no right to be that steady in the midst of a fire-fight.
“We’ve got to get to the reactor. We’re fast running out of time!” soothed Pippa, words tickling his ear she was so close. Keenan could feel the tension of her steel-coiled body pressing against his, could sense the pent-up violence of her controlled compression. For a fleeting moment it reminded him of better times, happier times, prettier times, and he glanced at the sweat beading on the flawless skin of Pippa’s beautifulface and licked his lips and remembered,and she was beneath him her writhing athletic body bathed in sweat and the smell of her sex in his nostrils the taste of her sweat on his tongue and she groaned a deep needful animal sound...
No! don’t go there! Keenan snapped back to reality; breathed deeply. My friend, you can never go there again.
“Has Franco got the Scatter Bombs?” He forced himself to keep the tremor from his voice.
“Yeah.” Pippa passed
Keenan a curved bubble of plastic containing fist-sized grenade charges strung along its supporting arc. She was frowning, eyes fixed to his face. She licked salt lips. Keenan, without realising it, watched the pink neatness of her tongue; imagined it on his skin. “This was supposed to be a fucking covert infiltration,” she snapped.
Keenan nodded. “Our stealth op has been flushed down the toilet.” He glanced back at Franco. “Ready? It’s a good half klick. Standard 4 formation. I want rearward three-round volleys. OK?” He pulled the pin on the Scatter Bomb cluster and tensed, ready for acceleration.
“Aye, Keenan. And Keenan?”
“Yeah mate?”
Franco grinned, strapping his Bausch & Harris to his back and hoisting quad-barrel Kekra machine pistols, one in each powerful hand. “You be damn careful with those Scatter Bombs. You could hurt somebody.”
“That’s the idea,” said Keenan through a haze of drifting cigarette smoke.
A parade square, symmetrical, functional, home to eight thousand soldiers holding stocky MPKs against matt black armoured WarSuits. A bugle sounded, forlorn, wavering, and sixteen thousand boots stamped in perfect unison as the battalion wheeled—a well-oiled machine—and every greased cog saluted officers standing stern but proud on a high fluid compress alloy podium. This was the climax of four years hardcore training. These men and women were not the elite; they were The Chosen.
There were no cheering families, no waving loved ones, no laughter, no joy, no open celebration; and yet, bright at the core of every man and woman assembled for this clandestine Combat K Class Passing-out Parade burned pride, and strength, and an incredible determination: a commitment to the accelerating Quad-Gal Peace Process, an obligation to end the horror of the Helix War.
Explosions rocked the dense jungle, eight concussive blasts in quick succession sending palls of oily smoke rolling into the humid air. Machine gun fire rattled from olive darkness; short bursts, tracer flashing through the trees and cutting the scene with scissors. It was a savage, hurried exchange. Combat K appeared and sprinted through the jungle, boots thudding, Keenan in the lead with his focused machine gun, Pippa second, her PAD set to >SCAN< for navigation and warning of attack; and Franco to the rear, turning every few seconds to send deterrent bursts down their back trail.
“Up ahead?” said Keenan, sweat rolling down his smoke blackened face, dripping from his nose and chin.
“Confirmed. Between that triangle of redwoods. A single entrance.” Pippa gestured. “No guards on the PAD. Looks like we have a clear entry, gentlemen.”
“Yeah. I’m sure as hell our exit won’t be as smooth.” Keenan slowed to a walk, eyes searching surroundings, lids blinking away sweat. He hated the jungle; hated it with a vengeance. Too many damned places for the enemy. “You still showing clear local scans, Franco?”
“Yeah boss. But we’ve got movement two klicks west. Fifty soldiers. They could be ours.”
“You’re too optimistic. The Quad-Gal boys won’t be here for at least another hour, and only if we get this shit done. Come on, time is our biggest enemy. We’re moving in.”
The Terminus5 Series Shield Reactor—and sixteen others like it—were housed in low buildings forged from single alloy blocks. Each reactor had a protection chamber that was a classified item of military tek held by Terminus5 government, and protected from external scanners by radiation shielding mats. Combat K’s presence on Terminus5—as part of the spearhead of the Quad-Gal Peace Unification army—should have gone smoothly; without discovery. During covert Impact, the Terminus5 government should not have had time to scramble units to protect what was considered planetary low-key targets, such as this global reactor site. A whole planet was a lot of ground to cover. They shouldhave been blissfully unaware of the Quad-Gal’s planned incursion...
And yet Combat K had met resistance. Keenan told himself it was just coincidence, bad luck, but a nagging doubt tugged his paranoia. The compromise had been just too damned neat. Like deviant SPAWS feasting on a Shuttle’s ShieldShell.
Once disabled, the seventeen decommissioned reactors would allow a more overt military domino effect as Combat K squads—and then the REG army—flooded the open gateway and hit fast and hard. Like night follows day, targets would systematically topple, one after the other... with a minimal loss of organic life.
At least, that was the plan.
First, Combat K—and sixteen teams like it across the belt of the jungle world—had to deactivate the domino reactors. Targets had to fall within a tightly specified time frame.
Keenan rolled over, inhaling fresh white cotton mixed with the musk of the sleeping woman, and the aroma of mingled sweat. She lay with her back to him, a rhythm to her sleep, the flesh of her back scarred from an accident when she had been a child. He reached out to touch her—to touch the damaged flesh with innocent curiosity—but pulled back at the last moment as if lazily stung.
Sensing his movement, a sleepy Pippa turned and stared into his eyes. At moments like this she lost her hardness; when the beast withdrew from its cage and allowed a gentle femininity to break free. “You OK, Kee?”
Keenan nodded, but it was a lie, and she could read the guilt on his face like ink; in his eyes like tears; in his every breathing screaming pore. At home he had a wife, Freya, and two young bright stunningly beautiful girls. His guilt was a tangible thing; like a pall of nuclear ash covering his skin.
“This should never have happened,” said Pippa, stretching out her frame with a feline yawn, but Keenan could tell she didn’t mean it; by her tone, by her eyes, by the way her hand moved towards him and stroked his skin. There was too much tenderness there, too much need. He had become Pippa’s anchor, her lodestone. She was a hard woman, a killer, a devastatingly brutal assassin. But within her lurked a core of insecurity, a child in need of nurture, a young girl locked in a room craving nothing more than love and caring, and—ironically—protection. He had become her protector, her brother, her father, and, against all probability, almost forced by circumstances, he had become her lover.
“You’re right, it should never have happened,” he said, moving towards her and kissing her. Their lips brushed. Tongues teased. Her hand came up to rest against the side of his face with a tenderness that touched him.
“I could leave,” she whispered, nose pressed against his, sweet breath on his lips.
He pulled her taut powerful body towards him, eyes closing, heart accelerating. “No. I need you. I think I will always need you.”
And as the minutes rolled by and by, and he tumbled into her, merged with her, joined with her in body and spirit and mind... so a little part of him screamed... and deep down in the crawling stygian tomb of the soul where dark energy created nightmares born and nurtured by horror and hate... so a little part of him crumbled... and a little part of him died.
The alloy door of the Terminus5 Series Shield Reactor was cold under Franco’s gloved hand. He planted the explosive with precision against High Grade FF locks, then waved his comrades back, running and leaping into their adopted shelter. “Fire in the hole,” he said with a broad grin, putting his fingers in his ears as they cowered behind the fallen hardwood. The boom rocked the jungle. A huge chunk of scorched two-foot thick door went whirring over their heads, edges glowing. It clattered off into the jungle like a pinball.
“You don’t want that in the back of the head,” said Pippa, peering warily over the trunk where black smoke was idly dissipating. “Looks like we have an entry point, guys.”
Weapons covering arcs, the trio leapt the hardwood and moved across the rough ground, noses wrinkled at the stench of the explosion. Shards of twisted shrapnel lay scattered. The huge door had been torn from its frame leaving a ragged maw.
Guns poked inside, and the members of Combat K blinked at the up-rush of ice-chilled air.
“I don’t get it. Where’s the damn reactor?” Franco’s face twisted in a frown as they gazed into the void.
“Down there,” said Keenan, gesturi
ng with his weapon. “Initiate your PAD winches. Let’s move slow. This wasn’t part of the plan. So much for inside fucking information!”
“Great,” said Pippa, voice cool, wiping sweat from her creased brow. “This gig just gets better.”
Keenan’s face was solid stone. “Calm yourself. We have a job to do.”
“Yeah, boss. I’m just appreciating the comedy.”
Swiftly, Keenan attached his PAD micro-TitaniumIII cable to the battered stonework. He jacked in with a buzz, stepped backwards and was instantly gone. The PAD purred as it threw him into the darkness.
Pippa followed, lips a tight compression, and finally Franco swept his gun across the jungle with a scowl, gave a quick look to the sky—as if offering a final prayer—and dropped his armoured body into the void.
Two minutes later, the jungle parted as a camouflaged soldier advanced. He was followed by another—and another—until the jungle teemed with infantry. They formed a staggered semi-circle around the blasted reactor bunker. Guns were cocked, and heavy machine guns expertly assembled on tripods amongst the rough jungle smash.
“You sure they’ve descended, sergeant?”
“Yes, sir.” Salute.
“Don’t worry overmuch. The reactor is protected by The Tangled. I can assure you our offensive invaders won’t be coming out. And if they do?” He stared at the collective drilled barrels of the silent machine guns. “Well, we’ll be waiting for them.”
How deep? thought Keenan as the PAD TitaniumIII cable sped through his gloved hands, and light from his head-mounted torch sliced the ink. He had seen this sort of thing before; deep bunkers protecting military installations. This reactor alone could not be considered a massive protection issue; however, it was feasible that below lay a trap, or guard of some sort. At the end of the day, these machines were used for powering a Global Shield, no matter how low their officialpriority.