by Andy Remic
“Get out. Get the fuck out, now!”
Akeez half-smiled, but his gaze was black. “You have a Dark Flame burning inside you, Mr. Keenan. It will lead you on the Right Path.” Then he was gone. Keenan slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples, listening to the distant surge and crash of the sea. Beyond, the city breathed: sounds of traffic, voices in chatter, the clatter of plates in a nearby Dek Restaurant.
Cam glided into the room, spinning.
It hung, waiting patiently, above Keenan’s desk.
Finally, the man’s eyes opened and he stared at the security device. “I can’t believe that man; to invent suchathing in order to gain my services? What a bastard. In my younger days I would have shot him in the face and dumped his body in the sea, just out of principle.”
“Keenan, I’ve just had an exchange with Fortune. Fortune checked the data. The Fractured Emerald does exist, and is indeed rumoured to have psychic abilities. According to local Ket-i legend it can see into the future... and into the past.”
“So he was telling the...”
There came a long, uneasy silence. Cam spun on the spot; a sure sign of agitation in the tiny machine.
Keenan reached forward and picked up the metal card. It had an ident-chip contact. Keenan walked towards the window and looked out over the glittering waves.
“It would, of course, be a highly dangerous mission.”
“But then, you are a highly dangerous man,” said Cam.
“I could not do it alone.”
“You could always assemble a small team; you know some nasty cases, I am sure.”
“I would need the best.”
There came a long pause. Several tiny lights glittered across Cam’s black shell. “I think what you’re implying would be a terrible idea; nigh on impossible...”
“Why?”
“Since you last had communication, Franco has been locked in a mental institution and is pumped full of narcotics; whilst Pippa has been charged with eight counts of murder and segregated to a terminal security facility on Five Grey Moons. If she tries to escape she is instantly exterminated by implanted logic-cubes in her skull.”
“Still, I would need their help. If Pippa doesn’t kill me on sight...”
“She did threaten that, yes. I believe she said she would cut out your heart with her bare fingers. Then burn your corpse. Now, my large and violent friend, do you truly want my advice?”
Keenan turned, fixing his gaze on the Security PopBot. He gave a curt nod and waited, head to one side, unreadable look fixed to his mask.
“Let Akeez go. Stay here, run your little PI business and accept that sometimes in life justice is not achieved. Murders do go unsolved. Evil is not always punished. The weak are not always protected by the strong. Sometimes, Keenan, life is a bitch, and there’s just nothing you can do about it.”
“OK.” He turned, stared out to sea. Waves rolled over the shore, crested with a bubbling of foam.
“But you’re going to ignore my advice, aren’t you? You’re going to head off on a mission in the name of adventure, in the name of honour, in the name of justice.”
“Yes.”
“Why, Keenan? My prediction algorithms show you have a very low chance of survival, never mind success. And that’s just breaking out Franco and Pippa, before we even look at finding this psychic lump of mythological junk. There is a 99.97 percent chance that Pippa will rip off your head and piss down your neck. Why do it? Why risk so much?”
“Risk?” Keenan did not turn. His voice was obloquial. “Because I owe it to the memories of the ones I love.”
His words were so gentle they merged with the nearby hiss of the surf eroding the shingle beach.
Cam didn’t see the tears on the man’s cheeks.
Franco Haggis was in a world of pain.
“Get off me, you bastards!” he bellowed as the doctor and five stocky mental nurses squeezed into the Treatment Chamber and backed the swaying figure of Franco towards a row of benches. “I warn you, I used to be in a combat squad! I can kill a man with a single blow!”
“Of course you can,” said Dr. Betezh, standing with long powerful arms loose by his sides. His small black eyes were focused on Franco. His white crisp uniform was wrinkle-free, and only a little speckled with patients’ blood.
He looks like a shark, Franco realised.
And... a killer.
Franco felt the alloy bench press into his spine and he halted, calming his breathing. His head pounded from imbibed drugs. He felt groggy, senses treacle, limbs responding as if inebriated on the vodka he loved so much. With eyes gleaming like a cornered rat’s, he dropped his chin and allowed his hands to fall by his sides.
He would submit.
He would roll over and... die...
Dr. Betezh took another step forward, with infinite caution. He was no fool, and had played this game a million times over, in simulators and in the real world. His arms lifted and he sensed the threatening presence of the nurses behind him; three carried steel truncheons, and Betezh’s nostrils twitched at the subtle smell of oiled metal. Curiously, it aroused him.
Another step forward...
One more.
The smile was just spreading to Betezh’s lips as Franco sprang, a right hook thundering against the doctor’s head with such power that Betezh was spun around a hundred and eighty degrees and dropped to his knees.
There came a rush as the nurses charged Franco, accepting his powerful blows with an air of resignation until within the anarchy of mêlée a slam from a steel truncheon caught Franco across the forehead with a dull metallic slap. He went down, and he went down hard.
Dr. Betezh climbed to his feet as the five men (two with black eyes, one with a broken nose, one with estranged testicles) strapped Franco to the nearest bench. Buckles were tightened without finesse; straps levered into position with a weight of anger and pain. The men checked, double checked and triple checked every possible point of weakness.
“All yours, boss.”
Betezh nodded, moving to stand over Franco.
“Ahh, Franco.” Betezh leant forward, placing a hand on Franco’s arm. To an outsider, it would have appeared a gesture of tenderness, but as Franco’s eyes flickered open and clouds of red dissipated, he saw the movement for what it was: a frightening dead-zone of calm... before the oncoming rage of the storm.
“I was in a combat squad,” said Franco, groggy under imposed violence.
Betezh nodded, smiling kindly, and gesturing for the trolley which arrived with its one squeaky wheel. Franco knew what that squeaky wheel meant. It was the fun trolley: the pain trolley.
“What did you do, in this combat squad?” asked Betezh. He seemed suddenly interested. His bushy eyebrows were raised, and an emotion Franco could not understand had hijacked Betezh’s face.
“I was the... detonations expert.”
“You used to blow things up?”
Franco nodded, and as the needle slid into his vein he drooled a little, bloody saliva running from the corner of his mouth. He twitched a couple of times as Betezh stood back and without instruction—the nurses were good at their jobs, efficient to the point of bureaucracy—they removed Franco’s trousers and pulled apart his legs. They strapped his ankles into heavy steel shackles, buckling them tight.
“Not the green pads,” said Franco through a mouth of phlegm.
Betezh sighed, as two of the heavily-muscled mental nurses attached small green conductive pads to Franco’s balls, and spooled out the trailing wires to a gleaming machine. The machine looked innocent; functional, but innocent, like a gun without a trigger.
Betezh rubbed at his jaw, which throbbed from the impact of Franco’s tattooed knuckles. “Franco... there have been rumours that you plan an escape. At the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the ‘nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged’, we do not allow escape. Now, I will only ask you once: what are these plans?”
Fra
nco looked up through the drug haze. He raised his middle finger, shackled as it was, to the bench.
“Sit on this,” he muttered.
“As you wish.” Betezh’s voice was stone. He looked over towards a nurse and nodded. The man flicked a switch and the machine gave a little whine, then a jolt against its restraining bolts as gears meshed and it found its trigger.
“Let me out of here,” mumbled Franco, glazed eyes trying to focus. “I ain’t mad! I tell you, I ain’t mad!”
“That’s what they all say.” Betezh leaned close with a threatening intimacy. “Now, my friend, I would like to say this isn’t going to hurt... but it will.” He nodded and smiled. “It’s going to burn you inside-out, all the way to Hell.”
Betezh took a step back.
He gave a curt nod.
And the nurse turned the digital dial all the way to 10.
It was later, much later. Betezh sat in a broad leather chair with Franco’s screams still ringing in his ears. The kube buzzed in his hand and he initiated a burst, allowing a globe of light to grow rapidly in his palm. It was a long distance transmission; he could tell by the interference.
“You have news?” said a female voice.
Betezh nodded. “Yeah. Franco remembers.”
“Remembers what? I thought he was drugged?”
“He remembers Combat K, and his position within the group.”
“Betezh, you were placed there to controlhim, to sedate him, to damn well stop him from remembering. If the others ever found out...” She left the implied threat hanging in the air.
“We should have killed him, back on Terminus5. We should have killed them all.”
“Maybe.” The woman’s voice was too sharp. “Well, the time will soon come. Akeez has contacted Keenan; we cannot allow him to proceed down the path we anticipate.”
“Do you want me to kill Franco? I can do it tonight.”
“Not yet. He knows a lot about our operation, if only he could remember it. What you have told me amounts to shit. His recall is as blurred as his history. However, he could still be useful to us.”
“We walk a dangerous wire,” said Betezh carefully. He did not want to antagonise.
“What is life without a little danger? Without thrill? Without challenge? It becomes nothing more than a stale and second-hand experience; an armchair performance, a fucking banality.”
“It’s ironic,” said Betezh, voice low, “but sometimes I wonder if you should be the one locked away, instead of Franco. I wonder who is the more sane?”
Kotinevitch’s brown eyes narrowed. She smiled, showing neat little teeth. “Insanity is my middle name,” she said. There came a long pause. “I have contacted Mr. Max.”
She heard the harsh intake of Betezh’s breath. “If you play with fire, expect to get burned.”
“He is efficient.”
“Vitch,” said Betezh, voice low and filled with... she tried to place it. She settled on concern. “Mr. Max is unpredictable. I strongly recommend you leave him out of this business. Where Combat K is concerned, he is not appropriate.”
“He gets the job done, when all others fail. That’s what counts.”
“He is guilty of genocide,” said Betezh, voice so soft it was barely more than a whisper. “We cannot trust him. You have heard the rumours? You have heard the dark legend?”
“If you play at being soldier boys,” said Kotinevitch, words and eyes colder than frozen hydrogen and billion-mile distant, “then expect to get fucking annihilated.”
“And Franco?” persisted Betezh.
There came a moment of consideration; then a sigh.
“OK. Kill him.”
Chapter 2
Excision
It was late evening.
Keenan stood on his veranda, a fluted glass of Jataxa in one hand, home-rolled cigarette between his lips, smoke stinging his eyes as he watched three distant yachts superimposed on silver waves.
“You made all the arrangements?”
“Yes.” Cam settled beside Keenan and said nothing for a while. Keenan allowed the comfortable silence to extend as a breeze filled with salt ruffled his dark blond hair.
The second meeting between Keenan and Prince Akeez had gone more smoothly, especially with Cam and Fortune as mediators. Five million gem-dollars had been transferred to Keenan’s account at Off-World Holdings.
“Night’s falling,” said Cam finally. “Time to be moving; we don’t want to miss our private Y Shuttle. It’ll dock with our new transport 10,000 klicks post-orbit.”
“Did you get the Hornet? You said you were experiencing teething... problems?”
“No problem, Keenan. I got the Hornet. Three years old, just had an SMOT. Excellent condition; only twenty billion miles on the clock! Bargain at half the price.”
“Hold on,” Keenan back-tracked, “what do you mean, ‘we’? You said ‘We don’t want to miss our private Y Shuttle.’”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Oh no.”
“Keenan,” bristled Cam, “I am your Security PopBot. I am a GradeA Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3150. I have stayed on Galhari because I like you. However, I feel the current challenge has become a little bit... below my future achievement plane.”
“You mean you’re bored?”
“Well, I didn’t like to say anything before...”
“Cam, you’re a machine!”
“Even so, an MIR of 3150 actually outranks most life-forms in the Quad-Gal. If you want to be pedantic, you could say I am more human than human, certainly more intelligent than most of the dregs you find knocking about the galaxy these days.”
“Christ, Cam. I didn’t realise you had such a... a sense of self importance.”
“Still, my authentic ownership documentation with dealer stamp is in your name. You do, in fact, own me. As your property, I demand Possession Rights. If you don’t take me with you, I will initiate a state of immediate SD.”
“SD?”
“Self-destruct.”
“Bribery, damn you!” Keenan thought for a moment. “OK, let me think this one through. Answer me this: if we were dragged into a combat situation, separated from our firing team and our shuttle marooned on a hostile planet, would you, and this is important now Cam, would you be able to open a tin of beans?”
“Yes. Ha ha, very droll.”
“OK, OK. Would you be able to cook a sausage?”
“My sides are splitting, Keenan. You are a modern day stand-up comic. Now, can we get going?”
“Your loss of a sense of humour’s convinced me. What time did you say we were catching the Y Shuttle?”
“Five minutes.”
“You sure you’ve got all the papers sorted? I’d hate to reach Shuttle Emigration and stand there looking like a dick because you’d forgotten our exit visas.”
“Exit visas?”
“Only kidding.”
“Don’t dothat Keenan. You’ll give me a... a...”
“You can’t have a heart attack. You haven’t got a heart.”
“I was going to say nano-circuit modular burnout, actually.”
Keenan flicked his cigarette into the falling darkness, hoisted his pack, gave one last lingering look at the sea, and strode through his house for the last time. As he initiated D:LOCK-down, he thought grimly, and I hope this isn’t for the final time.
Final, as in:terminal. Terminally not coming back.
Cam followed the big ex-soldier, grumbling bitchily.
Franco Haggis stared from the barred window at the rain. It pounded from thunder-grey heavens.
What the hell am I doing here?
His past was a maelstrom of confusion, memories a shower of snow in a snow-globe without continuity or even a timeline. He didremember some things. He remembered Combat K. He remembered Keenan. And he remembered the Visit—just seven days ago—when Keenan had explained The Plan to a drugged-up Franco.
Yes, ThePlan
to get free.
God, I wish I had one of those magic rainbow pills.
As night fell, so the patients were allowed their evening “relaxation” in the common room of the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the “nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged”. More importantly, jackets were notrequired.
The common room was predictably sterile, as benefited the environment for a daily gathering consisting mainly of deranged individuals. The walls were green, a puke and pus derived hospital green, the green of slopped-out cells, the green of plague and infection and rotten dead flesh. Padding lined the walls, and the floor lay bedecked in a faded, patterned linoleum that made it easier to clean up the piss.
Franco ambled around aimlessly, staring out of the high windows at the rain. He was sick: sick of the drugs and the patronising, sick of the loonies, sick of having electrodes clamped to his Roger.
“Hi Franco.”
“Hi Monkey.”
Monkey was a fat man with a mane of curly black hair and a tiny head that was almost perfectly round. His little head sat atop a distended, chocolate-grown body like a pea on a pie. He was, to all intents and purposes, mad. And he carried a terrible secret, to which Franco held the key.
“Fancy a game of Monopoly?” said Monkey.
“Yeah.”
Franco, however, despite the drugs and the rain and the melancholy, found it hard to contain his excitement. Franco had been saving his daily rations as part of The Plan, as explained by a heavily disguised Keenan: The Plan which was to be carried out... tonight.
They set out the Monopoly board. Franco chose the old boot.
“Why do you choose that old boot every time?” said Monkey conversationally.
Franco gave a sly look left and right. The guards, ever watchful with steel truncheons and sprays of laughing gas, were vigilant, narrow eyed. Seeing a friend with a broken spine did that sort of thing. It taught you not to fall asleep on duty for fear of waking up with fewer limbs.
“Luck, mate. I always used to choose ElBooto... back when I was in the Combat Squad.”