by Andy Remic
“Received,” said Pippa. “Reciprocating.”
“I have your list. There’re some... interestingitems here.”
“Can you get them?”
Rebekka looked down her nose. “I can get anything. The price will be...” Rebekka typed fast, then used a stylus built into her index finger to tap out and trace patterns on the PAD. “Seventeen K.”
“Transferring.”
They waited. Rebekka smiled, and pocketed her PAD. She seemed to relax, settling back in her plush red leather Queen Anne chair and steepling her fingers before her face.
“So you know Fortune. You are honoured. His contact is rare, and his help never given lightly.”
“Let’s just say we did him a favour, once, a big one.”
“Drink?” Rebekka gestured to the cubic waiter.
“I’ll have water,” said Keenan.
“Lemon tea,” said Pippa, and the waiter buzzed and floated away.
“You come a long way?” asked Rebekka. Her orange eyes shone, and Keenan found himself—for a moment—transfixed by that beautiful—stunning—gaze. He kicked himself internally; he knew enough about the proxers to understand, despite their outward humanoid appearance, they were actually very, very far from human in outlook, psychology and mental state. Their emotions were a dilution of human; in one account from back during the war Keenan had read that proxers were practically insectile. Physically, they could fight on after the loss of multiple limbs; but more than that, they showed little or no honour towards comrades, even in wartime where situations dictated the greatest of cooperation. Proxers always, always fought independently. In the proxer lexicon there were no words for “team”, “unit” or “squad”. The proxers lived and died alone.
Drinks arrived.
Rebekka had caught Keenan’s stare. “You like what you see?”
Keenan coughed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to appear rude. I was just admiring your... ahhh, eyes.”
Pippa gave him a sideways smile. “Lame,” she mouthed.
Rebekka took a sip from her own drink, something thick and blood red, and ran her tongue along her teeth. “When our business is concluded, if you have the time, I could show you some of the highlights of The City.”
“Another time,” said Keenan, feeling his cheeks colour. It had been years since such an offer had been made; back on Galhari, he had become somewhat of a recluse, a hermit; and he had to admit, he liked it that way.
“Where do we pick up this shopping?” asked Pippa, emulating Rebekka’s clipped trading style.
“I will take you down to the GeeSide Docks; we have warehouses and safedepots dotted around. It’s a good place for a transaction: discreet, not overlooked, and we have secure compounds without right of entry for locals.”
Keenan sipped his water, eyes scanning the surroundings. There were few places from which to be observed, but he was painfully aware of the high technology tree in The City. Just because he couldn’t see it, or hear it, didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Despite their high-tek PADs, there was always a superior technology.
Rebekka and Pippa chatted for ten minutes, and Keenan allowed himself to sink into a comfortable ease. He finished his water, and kept his hand on his Techrim, and his thoughts most definitely awayfrom Rebekka and those piercing eyes.
But why not? said a little demon in his mind. Why not leave Franco and Pippa behind, just for one night. Head out on the town with this babe, after all, it’s been a long time my friend, a damned long time, and God only knows you deserve some happiness after some of the scrapes you’ve been through. Go on compadre... she made you an offer. Take her up on it. Proxers are supposed to be... different than human women: fewer inhibitions, more animal, more... violent...
Keenan shivered.
“You OK?” smiled Rebekka, staring hard at him. For a moment he feared she could read his mind.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
Pippa gave him a strange look.
There came an acknowledgment blip from Rebekka’s PAD and she stood, smoothing out her long black dress. “My flyer’s up on the roof. It has enough cargo hold to transport your shopping back to...”
“Freeport 775,” lied Pippa easily, blinking away the questioning glance from Keenan.
“If you’d like to follow me.”
They crossed the lounge, headed for the stairs and the bullet-shaft elevators beyond. “Six hundred floors,” chatted Rebekka as they walked. “Each one based around a different theme. I don’t know about you, but the designers must have had some imagination! Sixhundreddifferent themed zones? They must have consumed serious drugs in the design phase!”
As they stopped by the lift, Pippa leant close to Keenan. Her hand touched the back of his leg and she slowly pressed a military signal against him: We’re being followed.
Keenan rested his hand loosely around Pippa’s hips, a casual gesture between casual ex-lovers. I know, he replied.
Set-up?
Possibly. Continue. Be ready.
OK boss.
They stepped into the lift and ascended to the roof.
Franco stood on a street corner and breathed deep the foul polluted air of The City’s natural depravity. He squinted through the grey, half-toxic downpour, through the crowds, through the concrete and alloy. There, he could see a man bent over performing fellatio on some kind of stumpy little dwarf alien with yellow skin. And there a woman was being robbed at serraka-point; she pulled free a 27mm pistol and blew the robber’s head off, quite literally. For a few moments, chunks of skull rained down amongst the heavy fall. Then the corpse collapsed and the woman looted it. And there, two small dog-type creatures were copulating in a puddle. The noise roared, filling his head. The stench invaded Franco’s nose, almost making him vomit: food, piss, shit, decay, disease, and entwined, a metallic smell, like a hive of busy insects. Franco licked his lips, savouring the taste that settled on his tongue like Halo Strike fallout.
“Mamma, I’m home!” he said.
As the lift doors opened and something like a tongue deposited them on the slick roof, Keenan was tense, Techrim ready for action and an uncompromising death. A brutal wind scoured him, blasting across a vast empty expanse of marble and concrete. The sky was a copper bruise. The rain had stopped. Wind whipped water from large standing puddles and speckled the three new arrivals in unholy baptism.
Rebekka’s flyer was bobbing against its glass mooring chain. The chain tinkled in the wind’s tease, dragging against the concrete platform and growing taut, then slack, taut, slack, in an endless musical rhythmical charade.
Keenan stepped free of the plush lift tongue in unconscious military formation with Pippa; both were checking for snipers, checking trajectories, and checking their own arcs of fire. Rebekka seemed not to notice, but Keenan smiled sombrely. How professional was she? Really? Was she just an arms dealer or... something more?
She led the way to the flyer.
Cautiously, Keenan and Pippa followed.
The roof of the All That Glitters was high, and around them The City spread out and beyond, scrolling away over an undulating landscape for ever: buildings on buildings on buildings, patches of greenery, zones of skyscrapers. In the distance, Keenan could make out stacked housing bloks rearing into the heavens for a good kilometre, and apparently blocking out the storm. Must be a million people live there alone, thought Keenan, like sardines. Jesus, what a place.
Far below, too distant to see, gunshots echoed. Then the rain started again, pounding the roof, and they hurried to the shelter of the flyer. Rebekka started a whisper-quiet engine and disengaged the mooring chain, which whipped back into its housing. They floated swiftly up into the advancing storm.
“How long?” asked Pippa, The City invisible for the moment as they cruised through charging clouds. Lightning crackled along the flyer’s flanks. Rebekka’s face was a bright blue glow in the reflection from the instrument panel.
“Three minutes. All your gear should be assembled.”
They swept down from the sky, back into reality, and the world unrolled beneath them. A huge tidal river swept from east to west, around which rose mammoth cranes and towers, and a nightmare of dockyard buildings and freighter depots. They dropped low, skimming a million waiting containers. Huge FreighterBulks bobbed laboriously at anchor. Even through the protective PlastiGlass screen they could hear the cacophony of this giant insect hive. The City was busy. It was a place that never stopped, never slept.
Lights flickered beneath them. The flyer swayed, circumventing half-klick towers and cranes almost as big. Keenan’s eyes were wide. He’d visited The City before, but it had been years previously and the... the scale had grown during the intervening time. Whereas once it had been just big, now the whole essence of the place was truly, awesomely titanic: an aberration, a spaghetti slum of insanity, a concrete abortion.
Rebekka dropped the flyer to ground level, and they chased their shadows through a criss-cross of container lanes. Huge steel boxes hammered by to either side with drumbeat rhythm.
“You’re confident,” said Keenan, leaning forward over her shoulder.
“I’m good.”
“I hope so. Or we’ll get squashed.”
“Trust me.” Rebekka turned and smiled only inches from Keenan’s face. He could smell her perfume, see the wetness of her proxer lips, and he inhaled her scent without restraint. He could almost feel Pippa’s eyes drilling the back of his head.
They suddenly decelerated and Rebekka brought the flyer skimming right, along a narrow dark alleyway lined with unlit crates. They touched down beside three twelve-wheel BMW limousines, which gleamed, black gloss, in the storm-lit gloom.
Men were waiting, with guns. Keenan felt Pippa tense as Rebekka stepped free, boots clacking on the steel road. She leant back in, wind whipping her hair about her face. “Come on. It’s freezing. Your kit is ready.”
“We on?” hissed Pippa.
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
They stepped out, wary, and stared hard at the men. Most were big, stubbled and wearing expensive suits. At the end of the row of muscle stood—
“Shit. Look,” grinned Keenan, “Slabs.”
Slabs, genetically modified humans bred in VATS for the game of war. Many centuries ago they had enacted battles on planetary gameboards, their flesh as expendable as the billionaires who bet on the outcome. War had, for a period, become an unfashionable way of settling disputes. Why should millions die when diplomacy, political guile and backhand monies do the job instead? But some races, bloodthirsty and decadent, had taken war to another level on backward fringe planets where nobody policed and nobody seemed to care. No longer an act of aggressor and victim, no longer an activity of technology versus inferiority, (after all, when did an invader actually invadewhen the odds were stacked against them? Oh no. Only when victory was assured was a head placed under the guillotine. History had unveiled that particular fallacy with a series of guerrilla wars that had left countries and even whole planets reeling in the aftermath of ill-thought out invasions and dumb-fuck politics) war was accelerated to the next level: that of game. Hell, why watch little simulated figures on a gamescreen or playwall when you could breed up your commanders, sergeants, infantry, pilots: breed them all up in a VAT in their hundreds and thousands and millions, choose your battlefield over a glass of port, then set these genetic creations against one another in a scrum of real actual violence that left a huge splat of organic soup at the end of the day? After all, Slabs were only genetically bred defects—right? Huge, muscular, far more physically powerful than their cerebrally superior breeders, yes, but created life, unworthy life, a creation that could not think, could not achieve the higher plane of existence where life became deserving of its place. After all, who listened to the screams of a pan of frying mushrooms? Who cared when lettuce was mushed in a frenzy of salad massacre?
But the Slabs had rebelled. Slabs were not as stupid as their masters first thought. And the C Class, as it became known, masterminded the Christmas Uprisings where a hundred thousand Slabs in full battle dress, armed with 2070 Kalashnikovs and driving tanks given to them by their masters, turned on and slaughtered nearly sixty thousand settlers, gameplayers, reviewers and (some would say deserving) hypocritics. It was a day of blood and hell: a day of retribution that left the Slabs with their own democracy, government, and seat on the Galactic Parliament.
Now Slabs were used throughout the Quad-Gal as hired muscle. They were powerful, awesomely aggressive, but didn’t really think too much, which suited many employers down to the ground.
“I hope they’re friendly,” murmured Pippa.
“So do I. They’re a bastard to put down.”
Both remembered Franco emptying a full fifty-two round clip into one crazed Slab professor from the University of Central-Quad during a pleasure cruise through the Orgas Cluster; Combat K had been on covert ops, in place to protect a rich Quad-Gal senator, his wife and seven (multi-ethnic, multi-alien) concubines. Somebody had put chemicals in the Slab’s B&S during a tuxedo dinner, which in turn sent the pumped-up steroidal lunatic on an insane rampage. Franco had to cut the Slab’s damn head off before it would stop its terrifying onslaught.
“Don’t worry,” smiled Rebekka, attempting to disarm a rising tension that greased the air, “they are for our protection—especially the Slabs—and not here to rip you off. We’re carrying a lot of expensive stock. If we assassinated every prospective buyer then we’d never get any return business, would we?”
The rain had stopped again, but still clouds bunched like gnarled hardwoods, brown and grey, and swirled with copper. Keenan breathed deeply, eyes scanning the line of mercenaries and criminals; they were a rag-tag band and Keenan didn’t trust them as far as he could spit.
Rebekka approached a huge man with an Uzi II.
“I don’t like this,” said Pippa from the corner of her mouth. “This amount of hardware is way too convenient.”
“We’re buying illegally: stolen military kit. Be patient.”
Keenan approached Rebekka, as a huge mercenary turned cold dead eyes on Keenan. His instinct was to put a bullet in the man’s skull. “Come on.” Rebekka smiled encouragingly, and moved to a large steel container lit by bare bulbs from ceiling ridges. Keenan glanced around, breath frosting for a moment. A strange silence settled over the place. It reminded Keenan of... a tomb.
He followed Rebekka inside, where the container was lined with shelves and stacked high with weapons. Pippa, her gun held in the open, stayed close.
Rebekka moved to a low table on which a small computer flickered. She typed fast, and text scrolled up the screen. “Your shopping list,” she said. “I hope we can do business again. Please feel free to check every item. There is no hurry. We are quite secure here.”
Keenan glanced around. The walls were lined with pistols, machine pistols, machine guns, bombs, grenades, mines, heavy mortar weapons, technical rifles, sniper rifles, flak suits, KJ suits, electronic WarSuits, packs, boots, clothing, and a hundred items of military minutiae right down to the EBH: the Emergency Bobble Hat. Keenan stalked the shelves, eyes scanning the stock of equipment. He smiled at Pippa.
“Looks good,” he said.
She gave a nod, but did not return his smile. She was tense; too tense.
Does she sense it too? thought Keenan.
Suddenly, guns roared outside the steel container, deafening even within its confines, and Keenan, Pippa and Rebekka all flinched, dropping to defensive crouches. Keenan shot Rebekka a scowl, just as bullets scythed through the container’s walls, screaming through steel, cutting shafts through the dust and leaving tracers of pale evening light.
Keenan turned; Pippa’s Makarov touched the back of Rebekka’s head and jabbed, hard.
“Bitch.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” hissed Rebekka through gritted teeth.
“Slow down!” snapped Keenan. A chopper smashed overhead. More automatic guns roared; then came the distincti
ve whine of miniguns. Keenan launched himself across the chamber, hammering into Pippa and Rebekka and taking all three of them to the ridged ground. Bullets screamed through the container punching fist-sized holes in the steel on streams of superheated air. Keenan scrambled towards the doors, just as a Slab cart-wheeled past the opening, body torn open spraying blood, suit holed, head exploding in a shower of bone and brain gristle. Screams echoed. More guns whined and then came several double blast slams of a shotgun. Keenan swallowed, throat dry, trying to work out what the hell was going on, and where the enemy was.
The container doors slammed shut, and bolted from the outside.
“Shit.”
“This isn’t part of the plan,” said Rebekka. Her face was ashen, staring up from the floor. Her fine long dress seemed suddenly tattered, abused. “Please believe me, it’s none of my doing!”
“I say we kill her,” snarled Pippa, gun still covering the prostrate proxer.
“No.”
Keenan, cool now, brain ticking fast and with Techrim in his fist, moved to one of the holes in the wall. Outside, he could see nothing. He glanced up, hearing the smash of the chopper in the distance. It banked.
“He’s coming back. You two move to the corner, away from the explosives.” Pippa cursed, suddenly realising the vulnerability of their predicament. If a stray shot hit a grenade, mine, cluster-bomb or HighJ, they were, quite literally, going to be blown apart: dog meat, porno spaghetti, as they said in the squads.
“Kee, what we gonna do?”
Keenan was at the container doors. They were locked, and he rattled them. Overhead, the chopper howled, and again they heard the whine of charging miniguns. Keenan paled. They would be cut in half within an eye-blink!
There was only one thing he could do.
Blow their way out...
He sprinted to the shelf, grabbed a Babe Grenade and within a second was wedging it between steel planks.
“You’ll kill us all!” hissed Rebekka, orange eyes wide.