by Andy Remic
“Franco’s a big boy. Well, five feet, anyway. He can look after himself.”
“Yeah, I suppose he can. God, I wish I had a smoke.”
“I didn’t find your smokes, Keenan, but I did get you a present.”
“What’s that?”
She tossed something through the darkness. It landed heavily, thudding, and Keenan lifted the salt-encrusted Techrim.
He smiled. “Thanks.”
“It was down by the sea. I’d give it a good clean first.”
“Yes.”
Pippa gazed into baby flames.
Keenan closed his eyes, cradling his gun. And, despite their predicament, sleep came far too easily.
Wow, thought Franco. That was some rush! What kind of drugs were they? They blew ma fackeeeen maaind! He blinked. His mouth tasted of sulphur, and was dry, very, very, very dry. He felt sweat trickling down his back and heat prickling his scalp. Hmm, he thought. So, some party hey? Wonder if I scored? Some sexy little blonde chick yeah I know the one, Kristel with her thick blonde hair and baby blue eyes sweet sweet sweet little Kristel, bet she goes like a slick whore on KY acid.
Salt. Sand.
Franco opened his eyes and stared at the white water before him.
A beach? Was it a beach party? Damn fine beach party if you ask me, sure there were lots of naked ladies and folks getting jiggy with it and giving it all the zigga zig ahhhh.
Franco rolled onto his back. He groaned, although hardly any sound escaped through cracked and swollen dry lips. That’s some dehydration, he thought, must have drunk like a horse. If only I was as good looking as one ha ha ha!
A shadow loomed over him.
Ahh. This will be room service, thought Franco optimistically.
The figure leant close.
It was Dr. Betezh: Betezh, with a seriously stapled Frankenstein-reject face. Betezh, who looked as if he’d not only had a bad day, but a bad week, month, year and decade.
Franco’s mouth opened in an inflatable doll O of surprise... as Betezh’s still-bound sausage-finger hands came down with a double thump on Franco’s skull.
“Ouch! You bastard! That hurt that did it really hurt!”
“Hurt!” seethed Betezh, “Hurt! I’ll fucking show you pain my little ginger cockroach, have you seen what you did to my fucking face? I just spent a whole hour looking into a milky pool, trying to work out who’s the most sexy, me, or a genetic experiment at the hands of the fucking Nazis!”
“You need to calm down,” said Franco, as a flood of really bad memories tumbled into his skull: Mount Pleasant, escape, Hardcore, Pippa, PopBot, Right-hook, Guinness, Razor-droid, hotel, Hornet, industrial staple gun, Crash, Betezh free... ahhhhhhhhhhh, Betezh free. Shit. “Calm down lad,” said Franco hopefully.
“Calm down, calm down, calm down!” screeched Betezh. The look of a crazy man glinted in dark eyes.
“Yes,” said Rebekka. “Calm down.” The chunk of driftwood descended, whammed Betezh across the back of the head, and knocked him out cold. Rebekka leant forward. She smiled. “Better get you out of that sun, Franco, before it sends you crazy.”
“Hallelujah to that,” he said.
Franco had been lying prostrate in a rocky scar of pink rock, an inverted V formation reaching from jungle to sea. Together with Rebekka, they dragged Betezh’s unconscious form up the rocky incline to the shade offered by towering, hundred-foot hardwoods.
In the shade, they drank milk water from pools in the jungle, and Franco felt his senses gradually returning. He eyed Rebekka—now stripped to her waist and wearing very little by way of clothing—appreciatively.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she snapped.
“Just looking. Just looking.”
“OK Franco. You’re the military man; used to be a member of a combat squad, and all that. Which way now?”
Franco stood up, stretching his small barrel frame. He glanced left, then right. He lifted his nose, as if sniffing the wind. He puffed out his chest. He wet his finger and lifted it, tilting his head as if listening to some internal voice. Then, finally, he shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon.
“Well?”
“No idea,” he shrugged.
“Maybe this could help?” Rebekka held out a PAD and Franco beamed.
“Now that is perfect, my dear.”
“Glad to be of service.”
Franco primed the PAD, then rotated the inbuilt scanner. “Hmm,” he muttered, “looks like we drifted. Point of impact was—shit, look at that.”
“What is it?”
“Activity: men, armed, lots of men.”
“You mean Ket-i?”
“Them’s the fellas. Anyway, they’ve got guns and are... homing in on a location.”
“Our location?”
“No, further up the beach.”
“You think it could be Keenan?”
“I’d put money on it,” growled Franco. “He attracts trouble like a primary school attracts paedophiles.”
Rebekka tutted, frowning. “That’s somewhat politically incorrect.”
“Hey, I didn’t say I liked paedophiles. After all, there was that mission where me and Keenan and Vodka set a trap, lured in twenty-three of the slimy good-for-nothing grease-ball maggoty pieces of shit and wasted them. It was like, cool man, and all off the record you understand. Then we buried their rotting corpses in an unmarked grave under Stavros’s Scrap Cars Inc.” He coughed, and fidgeted for a moment. “Anyway, we managed to fool the Crimes Against Humanity Committee. Although I don’t know how the fuck they managed to class those slimy weasel-faced paedos as fucking humanin the first place... always the same, innit? Some social governmental department protecting the slime of the earth: how can they? When the slime in question is a deviant misrepresentation of what we consider human?”
“Franco? Keenan? Big trouble? Armed Ket-i?”
“Yeah. Follow me.”
“What about Betezh?”
“Hit him.”
“What?”
“Hit him. Guaranteed to wake him up, after all, he gets a hard-on for violence.”
“It’s OK,” muttered Betezh, “I’m awake. I’ve got another lump to add to the catalogue of abuse inflicted on my person, but I am awake. Wish I wasn’t, though.”
“Should have thought about that before coming after me! Ha!”
“Franco,” said Betezh through squinting eyes, “you just don’t see the bigger picture, do you? This isn’t about you. This is about the whole squad: Combat K, previously convicted of war crimes; General Kotinevitch; the whole damned War Fleet.”
“Huh?”
“You live a simple little life, don’t you, Franco?”
“Better that way. Keeps me more—” he twitched, “y’know, in focus. Now, come on! Get on up there ahead. Before I have to—y’know—prod you.”
Betezh scrambled to his feet, and was poked ahead by a pointed stick Franco had found half buried in sand. It had curious notches and markings; if Franco had looked closely he would have realised it was not some simple tribal weapon, but made of the latest TitaniumIII MicroAlloy. The stuff they used to build starships and FTL craft: expensive.
“It’s going to be dark soon,” said Rebekka, voice soft.
Franco winked. “It’s all right, love. I’ll look after you.”
“I know.” She shivered. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Keenan had spent his entire working life in the military. No: more. He had spent his entire working life in incredibly dangerous situations, and he had a nose for when something was wrong, an instinct that did not compute with normal, mortal man. This instinct made him good at his job: a sixth sense that kept him alive. And, as his eyes flickered open in the darkness, this otherness, this feeling deep inside his veins and his bones spoketo him, with words of warning, words of blood, words of violence. Silently, he moved to Pippa—asleep now beside the fire—and took one of the religiously cleaned MPKs. He slotted a magazine home with the tiniest of well-oiled clic
ks; the sound brought Pippa instantly awake.
“Trouble?”
“Yeah, I think.”
Pippa took a weapon and they both moved to a crouch, the fire to their backs, the practically impenetrable mass of the jungle before them, a wall, a block, a tangle of living, breathing, squawking, screeching confusion.
“How many?”
“More than ten,” said Keenan. “We’re too open here; let’s get into the foliage. That which hides them will also hide us.”
“I hate jungle warfare,” hissed Pippa, voice hardly more than an exhalation of warm air.
“Amen to that.”
They moved forward with infinite ease. The jungle reared around them, above them, a towering mammoth stretch of creepers and ferns, bushes and trees. Trunks clamoured for freedom. Branches reached for life-giving sunlight.
In the jungle, everything seemed—suddenly—silent: a deep and oppressive silence; cloying, claustrophobic, like a hot pillow over your face, a pine-oiled gag stuffed down your throat.
Keenan halted, sinking to the ground.
Pippa followed, moving her back to him. They touched. She pressed a signal against his ribs and he responded. They manoeuvred weapons and waited.
They’re coming.
I hear them.
They were like ghosts gliding through the jungle. They moved with care, footsteps picked singly, heavy weapons presented for action, eyes focused and alert. Was it just a coincidence they were approaching Combat K’s little campsite? Was it a coincidence that a few hours earlier they’d been shot out of the sky and crashed a Hornet attack fighter in the sea?
Keenan thought not.
He steadied his weapon.
Something screeched in the jungle, and suddenly everything was chaos, as a creature, large and bulky and squealing like a pig charged, bouncing from the trunks of trees. Three of the men opened fire, bullets screaming on trajectories of tracer through the darkness, thudding into trunks and slapping leaves and Keenan levelled his MPK and gave three three-round bursts. Bullets whined, kicking through foliage, and lifted one of the large Ket-i warriors from his feet, spinning him back to slap into a hardwood. His chest imploded. Blood spattered the trunk. Bullets turned on Keenan, and he powered his weapon, gunning down the huge tribal figures that loomed from the darkness; Keenan sprinted forward, to the right, circling the group of attackers. Their weapons yammered. Tracer spat orange confetti streamers through black. Keenan’s gun picked another Ket-i soldier off his feet, ploughing him into the sodden blanket of jungle detritus. Pippa was gone in the mayhem. The squealing creature charged at the men, who gunned it down in a shower of blood and bacon. Smoke curled through the trees. Keenan picked off two more soldiers, watching stoically as they hit the ground, thudding dead. Pippa, he wanted to scream, but he clamped his mouth tight shut, tracked another dark-skinned warrior, and ducked as bullets whined overhead. Then it came, a cold caress in his mind and he half-turned but saw the Ket-i warrior too late. He saw the gun levelled and he couldn’t do it, couldn’t make it in time. The swing of his MPK would leave him dead and eating leaves—
Infinity fell. Smoke curled. Muzzles flashed.
The world dropped into a chamber of muffled slow-motion.
Keenan blinked a slow-time lazy blink and saw the finger pull the trigger; saw the sub-machine gun judder and buck, then steady, as bullets wham wham whammed from the cool-holed barrel on tiny flashes of fire and slapped a violent dance across the narrow clearing disintegrating petal fronds by his head—
He felt the cut of the bullet slicing his ear.
Stayed cool, and wished for a cigarette.
He reached—too late—for his gun.
Chapter 9
The Children of the Sea
As bullets spewed around him, Keenan lifted his weapon, aimed, and fired a three-round burst. The Ket-i warrior slammed down, twisting and jerking to the ground, smacked hard to lie suddenly still and broken like some spastic marionette with severed strings. Keenan stared hard through the drifting smoke, allowed a single exaggerated breath to leave his body, then did an internal check: nothing punctured, nothing dead.
He glanced up, for a moment, as if in prayer.
Shit, he thought. So much in this world is luck.
He grinned.
By God, but that fucker was a bad shot.
Silence fell like rain. Footsteps charged the jungle scatter, and the rest of the attackers were gone: black ghosts, dissipated dreams. Then Pippa came gliding from the claustrophobic entanglement and knelt beside Keenan. Her eyes were alert, almost alien in the strange light. “You OK, boss?”
“Yeah. Fuck it. I’m great. Check the bodies. Get their weapons and ammo. God knows we’re going to need it.”
They checked the bodies, and it was as their earlier research confirmed. The warriors were big men, heavily muscled, covered in war scars and tattoos, and wearing bone jewellery taken—reportedly—from the bodies of warriors they had slain. This was a race whose name for strangerand enemy were the same thing. A race that lived for war, lived to kill, as their unprovoked attack had demonstrated.
Warily, Keenan led Pippa back to the beach. The sun was rising, tendrils of fire cutting the horizon into vertical streamers. Keenan moved down to the sea and washed the blood from his face and arms. He watched as a white mist drifted in over the knobbled angular coral and gradually obscured the horizon; it was thick and white, and smelt strangely cool. Returning to Pippa, he shook his head.
“This is a strange place.”
“An alien planet?”
Keenan laughed. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
They watched the mist, and heard rather than saw Franco’s triumphant jog up the beach.
“Keenan!” he boomed. “You’re alive!”
“Keep it down, Franco. We’ve already had one contact.”
“Sorry mate.”
The small group re-formed, smiling, and with Franco slapping everybody on the back, even Betezh, who scowled through his bruises and dark, sullen mood.
“At least nobody is dead,” beamed Franco, as Pippa handed him an MPK sub-machine gun. Despite his comedy, he handled the weapon expertly and checked its mechanisms, its mag, and its alignment. “We have to be thankful for small mercies.”
“Is Cam with you?” asked Keenan.
“No. You mean... the little bugger might have been squashed?”
“I think he would have found us by now. He would have been able to scan for us. Shit.”
“Yeah, but look at the positives,” said Franco sombrely, and then broke into a grin. “He might have been squashed!”
Rebekka smiled, almost shyly, at Keenan. He looked away, back to Pippa, who was watching closely with a strange expression on her face. She turned to the sea and gazed distantly, away into a swirling, thickening mist.
“What now?” grinned Franco. He stood, hoisting his weapon. Milk mist crept up the beach and swirled around his boots, drifting off in skeins to infiltrate the jungle.
Pippa held up her hand. “Wait. Listen.”
They all heard them: motors, low-level stealth engines purring close by. The sounds cruised and echoed eerily through the mist, one coming quite close. Franco, who had his battered PAD out on his knee, gestured to the team:
One boat, two occupants, heavily armed.
There’s our transport, signalled Keenan. Seems safer than going across land.
Keenan held up his hand, fist clenched. Wait here.
He moved to the edge of the Milk Sea; white water lapped his boots, then he waded in to knee depth and glanced back. His companions were gone. The mist had grown much thicker, and was still developing and building. Keenan knew he had only minutes. For all he knew, the twin suns would burn the mist away into vapour and they would be exposed on the beach to yet more men with guns.
He focused on the buzz of the stealth engine. The boat was inside the enclosing embrace of angular coral, which they had spotted from the beach. Keenan moved further out into shallow wa
ters, his MPK poised, eyes and ears alert.
The boat was coming closer. Keenan smiled a sick smile.
It suddenly appeared, gleaming and slick with white brine, the narrow hull and specialised markings designating it as a Raptor Boat, a special forces tool used across a thousand worlds. What were you expecting? he thought, a bamboo canoe?
There were two heavily armed Ket-i warriors onboard; their eyes widened as they spotted him, but too late, as Keenan’s hand grasped the Raptor, and his MPK was in the pilot’s face. The boat slowed. The engine buzzed. Keenan smiled a smile filled with promise.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, alien.”
“Bring the boat in to shore, slowly, and I won’t put a bullet in your pretty face.”
The two huge warriors exchanged glances, and Keenan saw them tense, ready to attack. They were a warrior race. They were not taken prisoner; they fought to the death.
The Ket-i lunged for the MPK, and Keenan put a round in the warrior’s shoulder; the bullet exited in a shower of shoulder-blade shards, hissing off into the mist. The soldier recoiled, face twisted in agony as he stumbled back into the Raptor Boat’s interior, and Keenan levelled the MPK at the second Ket-i.
“You want some as well? This time I’ll put you down.”
The warrior shook his head, and Keenan climbed aboard the Raptor, rocking it savagely. The Ket-i steered the boat onto the shore, and Keenan gestured for the two to exit. The Ket-i warrior helped his wounded companion and they stood on the sand, looking a little sheepish.
“This isn’t their way,” said Pippa.
Keenan shrugged. “Live or die. They are choosing to live.”
“Good choice,” nodded Franco. He approached the huge warriors warily, and bound their hands behind their backs using raze-wire. Then, kicking the backs of their knees, he rolled them onto their faces and bound their ankles.
“Look how the heroes operate,” sneered Betezh.
Keenan rounded on him. His face was a mask of controlled fury, and Betezh recoiled.
“Shut up,” growled Keenan, “or I’ll feed you to the sharks.”