War Machine (The Combat-K Series)

by Andy Remic

  “You were merely an embarrassment,” said Betezh.

  “No, no,” said Keenan. “That problem was sorted. This went further. This went deeper. There’s another game being played here, and I don’t like the smell.”

  “Whatever,” said Betezh, quietly, “I was given orders to bring back Franco after his escape. That led to you. Kotinevitch knows of your re-formation; I believe it’s called a GroupD Prohibition? You knew the consequences and still re-formed. How sad. How—ultimately—tragic. Every killer in the Quad-Gal will be after your skulls.”

  Pippa nodded. “He’s right.”

  Keenan considered. Then he scratched his stubbled chin. He pointed at Betezh. “This conversation isn’t finished. You hear me, little man? Little fucking internal affairs bureaucrat man? You’re a long way from home. And we’ve got the fucking guns.”

  They left. Betezh deflated.

  The Med Bay rolled into silence.

  “You get that?” he whispered. Inside his head, a chip glowed.

  “Every word,” said the sibilant binary hiss of General Kotinevitch.

  The Hornet cruised, Ket turning majestically below. Sunlight glimmered from a distant horizon, skimming the planet, illuminating the vista. The Hornet banked, then dropped with a howling acceleration. Panels glowed and engines yammered with retro-thrust as Pippa skilfully took the attack vessel through the upper reaches of this idyllic and apparently peaceful world.

  The air became thick: hotter, brighter. The Hornet started to vibrate, a resonation that hummed beyond hearing; Keenan glanced at Franco, who was gritting his teeth, hands clasped tight on the arms of his chair. Franco hated flying, especially planet entry without a SPIRAL dock.

  “You OK, mate?”

  “Yep.” It was a clipped word; an ejaculation of fear.

  “Relax,” soothed Keenan. “Everything’s cool, brother. It’s not as if we’re going to—”

  They heard a distant SLAM. The Hornet shuddered. Franco stared hard at Keenan.

  “What was that? What the hell was it? I thought you said we—”

  The Hornet shuddered again, and they all felt it. The machine dropped violently, accelerating, engines howling in metal agony. Keenan could see Pippa fighting the controls.

  “What’s going on?” screamed Franco.

  This time, the impact picked them up and sent them cart-wheeling through the atmosphere. Inside, Cam bounced from the cockpit windshield. Pippa, in her harness, was the only one to retain her seat as her face, tortured by G-force, fought with the unresponsive controls.

  Keenan crawled across the wall—now the floor—and dragged himself to Pippa by brute strength. “What’s—going—on,” he forced through gritted teeth. Then, sirens screamed through the Hornet’s interior. The fighter started to spin, flashing down through sunlight as the world swung and opened up below them, a panorama of lush wilderness and white water. Pippa was stabbing at controls.

  “We’re going to crash,” she said quietly.

  “What hit us?”

  “I—”

  More sirens screamed. There were a thousand clicks as crash-injectors flipped down from recesses. Keenan caught a glimpse outside; one of the Hornet’s engines detached, flaming, and was snapped away; gone.

  “Hold on!” shouted Pippa, and her voice was lost as the several thousand crash-injectors hissed and squirted, filling the Hornet’s interior with Crash Foam.

  Keenan turned, was hit by the foam, locked in place as it surrounded him and expanded in an instant; it filled his open mouth and nostrils and plugged his ears, and the world was hammered and descended into a cool green suspension as he was—effectively—divorced from reality. The Hornet’s emergency systems took control. Keenan breathed the weird rubbery substance; infused with oxygen and a sub-prapethylene agent, it would sustain him in stasis for around thirty minutes... enough time to crash... and providing the Hornet didn’t disintegrate in its entirety in the outside world, or, worse, explode.

  The ship rocked, a quick succession of blows that hammered Keenan despite the life-saving Crash Foam. He felt himself spinning, stop-motion rolling, turning like a fish in oil, and a distant noise like a subconscious roar of sea surf filled him and engulfed him. More and more blows devastated his being, and he was pounded into a state of tumbling unconsciousness... as an eerie muffled roar filled his drowning senses. He dived, falling and sinking and drowning under a great green ocean.

  The world felt wrong. Keenan choked, and it was as if he’d smoked a thousand cigars. He coughed, coughed and coughed and coughed, tears streaming down his face as his lungs disgorged Crash Foam, and he realised he was curled in a ball, retching, head pounding, pain needling his overstretchedeyes. The world was a focus, a concentration of agony, a need to eject that which filled his mouth and throat and lungs.

  He scooped thick acid goo from his mouth, plucked it from his nose.

  Again, coughing fits wracked his body until he could... breathe.

  Keenan sucked in precious air, and for a long time that was all that mattered. Bright red patterns dissolved from his brain and he opened his eyes. Damp sand met his confused stare and he lay for a while, watching the fine white that spread away from him, a perfectly horizontal platter laced with webs of splintered blue and pink shells.

  He realised he was on a beach.

  We crashed. Shit.

  The heat hit him like a brick. It was terrible: hot and humid, unbearably so. So hot it was a fist in his throat, confusion in his skull, filling his lungs with liquid fire and making it almost impossible to focus.

  He moved his head, and his neck and shoulder muscles howled in protest. With a groan, he slowly sat up and the world swayed. Keenan closed his eyes, put his head between his knees and concentrated on not throwing up. Losing the battle, he vomited, and heaved and heaved until his body groaned at him, muscles spasming. He crawled to the edge of the lapping sea and stared down at—

  White. The sea was white.

  Ket. I’m on Ket, he thought.

  He cupped his hands, washed his face and cleaned out his mouth with milky brine. Then he scrambled to his knees, and the world smashed into arrangement. The Milk Sea stretched away, vast and calm. Waves rolled, breaking a half-klick out on an arc of blue coral, which half-reared like a bony arm from milky depths. Keenan turned right. The beach stretched away, a shimmering plane crusted with crushed shells, flat and packed where it met the sea. A few feet back a wall of solid, twenty-foot high jungle blocked his exploratory view. Thick hardwoods, creepers and ferns all fought for supremacy; the jungle was a solid mass, a wall, a fortress. Keenan licked sour lips. It frightened him for a moment. It was a real, dangerous, brutal intimidation.

  The Milk Sea lapped. Something screeched in the jungle. Keenan’s gaze turned slowly to his left, traced his own squirming marks in the sand, then came to rest on a figure. It was clinging to a rock as if seeking integration. It looked dead.

  “Pippa!”

  Keenan crawled, scrambling to his knees, then his feet. Weak, he struggled across the sand, sweat bathing his body as he tugged free some of his foam-splattered clothing in a feeble fight against the awesome, beating temperature. He reached her. She had been conscious at some point and had tugged free her heavier clothes. One boot trailed laces in the sea. She was draped spastically across what turned out to be a huge violet shell, rimed with a sand salt concoction. Keenan pulled feebly at her.

  “Pippa? Pippa!”

  She groaned, eyes fluttering. With a burst of effort Keenan stood, picked her lithe, muscular form from the curled shell, and struggled up the beach, leaving a wide, zig-zagging trail.

  The heat smashed down.

  The twin suns were copper pans nailed to the sky.

  Keenan collapsed at the edge of the fearsome jungle, welcoming its shade like an old friend. It was cooler here, not much, but more bearable than the furnace of the sand and endless sky; the beach didn’t scorch him. Keenan gently placed Pippa on her back and surveyed the creepers wi
th a wary eye; pulling free a small knife he dragged free a long vine and sliced carefully into its flesh; water dribbled, thick and glutinous. Keenan touched it to his lips, then to his tongue, then allowed a little into his throat. He waited a few minutes to see if there were any sudden adverse effects, eyes scanning the white sea and the mirage of the horizon. There was no sign of the Hornet, or its wreckage. Eventually, carefully, he guided the creeper to Pippa’s mouth and allowed precious liquid into her bone-dry maw.

  Pippa’s eyes opened. She breathed laboriously. She ran a hand across her scorched brow and blinked rapidly, looking from Keenan to the beach to the white sea beyond.

  “What happened?” she murmured.

  “I was hoping you could tell me. The ship...”

  “Of course, the ship. We were hit.”

  “Hit?”

  “By ATA missiles. I didn’t even know we were targeted; whatever took us out was very, very advanced. That Hornet was a modern fighter, had some serious hardware and advanced AI detection systems. Shit. It didn’t even see the missiles coming!”

  “Where is it?”

  Pippa smiled. “The Hornet?” She gestured, a broad sweeping motion with her sun-scorched arm. “Out there, Keenan. Out there.” She shook her head, then put it in her hands.

  “You OK?”

  “Mmm. Just like before, isn’t it?”

  Keenan didn’t answer. Because he knew; knew exactly what she was referring to, Molkrush Fed: their abandonment; their survival, which in turn had led to their union; and the beginning of all their problems spiralling down and down and down, right to this very moment.

  Keenan stood, moving away from the shade of the jungle. Behind, insects hummed. There was a crashing sound deep in the jungle, and a honking as of a great pig. He shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon. No sign of Franco, or Rebekka... or Betezh. No sign of the Hornet, their guns, their equipment, bombs, WarSuits, shit.

  “Bastard.” Keenan kicked sand into the air and turned. Pippa shrugged. She had pulled a large yellow fruit from a tree, and deftly skinned it with Keenan’s knife. She cut a cube from the fruit, sniffed it warily, then swallowed.

  “It’s good.”

  Keenan accepted a piece and sat back down in the sand. “What a great start.”

  “Nobody said it was going to be easy,” said Pippa.

  “Great sentiment: optimistic. When the hell did you study for a philosophy degree?”

  “Just stating the obvious. We should camp here, build a small fire, gather some fruit. I’ll see if I can kill a pig—or whatever the hell was making that unholy racket—back in the jungle.”

  “I think we should look for Franco,” said Keenan.

  “What? And have both of us tear-arsing up and down the beach? No, we stay put, see if we can salvage gear from the Hornet. Franco will find us, if he is able. If we all set off wandering we’ll end up moving away from one another. He should have the sense to find us.”

  “We have another problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “If they—whoever they are—shot us from the sky, then they know we’re here. Our enemies may know we survived; they will probably come looking for us.”

  “We should be discreet, then,” said Pippa gently. She ate more fruit. “After all, we don’t want to be forced to kill them... do we?” Her smile was sweet and deadly.

  The twin suns faded towards a muggy hot evening. Night was about to fall—for the entirety of one hour—and Pippa had gone a short way, exploring, while Keenan smashed his own route forcibly into the jungle and pulled free large Splay Ferns, which he arranged into a small makeshift shelter... but also as camouflage to disguise them from aircraft. Propped on canes Keenan had broken with a rock, the small shelter was sturdy and he lined the floor with more wide-leaved fronds. He made makeshift mugs from hollowed fruit skins, and filled them with drinking water found in a small pool deep in the jungle, balancing them on a small ledge of curved driftwood he found on the beach.

  Pippa returned, walking warily along the edge of the jungle. She carried something in her arms.

  “Well, well, quite the little homemaker, aren’t we?” she said, voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “Just keeping myself busy.”

  “Waiting for Rebekka to show?”

  Keenan eyed Pippa levelly. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Then he noticed the gun; it was an MPK crusted with jewels of sand. Pippa held it not quite pointing at him, cradled like a wounded babe in her arms.

  “Well, you didhave that cosy little thing going, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “I saw you, in bed together, coupled like Siamese Twins. I thought I could smell the blossoming of true love; stank like rotting cabbage and old fish heads.”

  Keenan shrugged. “So what? Why would you care? You said you had no more feelings for me. So... why give a damn? Listen to Pippa, queen of the double standard. Hypocrisy’s her middle name.”

  The MPK shifted. Keenan eyed the barrel warily.

  They stood in silence for a while, both lost for words, caught up in emotions that tumbled back for a decade. Finally, Keenan noticed something flopping at the edge of the sea. His stomach lurched, a coldness flooding him like bad adrenaline. It was a body.

  “Shit.”

  Pippa turned, following his gaze.

  The body shifted with the surf, rolling, one arm flopping over. Pippa threw down her salvaged gun and they both moved uneasily across the sand, dreading, but knowing, deep down, what they might, or would, find.

  The twin suns beat at them: relentless, uncompromising, merciless.

  They slowed as they approached the corpse, apprehension filling both with toxins. Then Pippa barked a laugh, and Keenan glared at her. “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s a WarSuit,” she said. “Look.”

  “Jeez!” Keenan waded out, grabbing the high-tech integrated body armour and dragging the WarSuit up onto the sand. He laughed too, tension flooding away.

  “I was convinced it was Franco.”

  “Me too.”

  Pippa flopped down beside him. Her hair was tied up, and she removed the band, shaking free shoulder-length dark locks. They were matted with sand, but to Keenan she had never looked more beautiful. Her eyes glowed. Her face wore a simple radiance.

  “I feel we got off to a bad start,” she said. She smiled.

  “Well.” Keenan considered this. “You did say that if I got in your way you’d slit my fucking throat. And, I believe, you also mentioned gutting me like a fish. I think those were your exact words. Charming, I’m sure, but definitely not guaranteed to get you a date.”

  Pippa punched him on the arm. “You knowthat was only little old me.”

  “I kind of believed you. I seem to remember you saying that I broke your heart?”

  “You did.” Her tone was serious.

  Keenan sighed. He breathed deeply. “When I thought Franco was dead, a whole shit-load of problems came into perspective. It’s been... a long time... since I suffered like when... well, you know. It was hard, Pippa. It nearly destroyed me; nearly took me down. Months went by, where every morning and every night I found it hard to think of a reason to go on, a reason not to eat a bullet.”

  “So why didn’t you?” Her voice was soft.

  “My girls, Pippa: I kept seeing their faces. What would they have thought? Their daddy giving up, giving in, taking the easy way out, taking the easy option: the easy option was never my way, Pippa. You know that.”

  “So you’re still alive because of stubbornness?”

  “I’m still alive because I love my girls.”

  “And Freya?”

  “You know I loved her. You know we drifted apart. You know... shit, Pippa. I loved you, I still love you. That’s just the way the world works; it’s the way people work. People change and shift and move on. Friendships morph and die, shift and alter. Relationships—something so passionate you would have killed for, would have died for—they become nothing more tha
n a petty annoyance. Who left the cap off the toothpaste tube? Get your stinking muddy boots out of the hall! Why can’t you flush the toilet when you’ve used it? I think, deep down, we’re just solitary creatures who thinkwe need permanent companionship, but we don’t. Ideally, we need to be alone... more than anything.”

  “You’re describing yourself, Keenan, not the whole of humanity.”

  Keenan shrugged. “Maybe. Shall we get back in the shade? I think the sun is making me jabber like a monkey.”

  “Hey. You’re doing just fine.” She placed her hand on his arm.

  “So, we OK, then?” He looked at her. There was hope in his eyes.

  “Let’s walk first, yeah? Before we run.”

  “OK.”

  “After all, I’ve still got my gutting knife on standby, just in case.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he grinned.

  During the course of the evening they retrieved a large amount of kit, five MPK machine guns and a serious number of magazines. They managed to save three WarSuits, and quite a few HighJ bombs. Pippa made it her obsession to strip down all the weapons and clean them using Keenan’s torn-up T-shirt. They stashed the kit in the leaf-lined shelter, and as night fell and a sudden total darkness blanketed the jungle, Pippa built a small fire and sat, staring into the flames.

  Keenan, lying on his side, watched her face lit by a demon-glow.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

  “I know.”

  “So modest.”

  “Beauty is never enough.”

  “Yeah,” sighed Keenan. “Iknow that. But you’ve got everything, Pippa: beauty, brains, the figure, the education. Why haven’t you settled down? Why haven’t you had children? What dragged you into this world of war?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It’s something to do with scissors, isn’t it?” His voice was soft, eyes fixed on her.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “OK. I hear you.” He changed the subject. “I hope Francis is OK.”