by Andy Remic
“What with? Your burner went in the marsh.”
“Damn and bloody bollocks.”
Keenan glanced back at JuJu. “To answer you, Franco, no, we’re not killing him. This son of a bitch is coming with us, back to the Metal Palace, back to the Fractured Emerald, back to his home.”
“I am no guarantee of entry,” said JuJu. Light glittered against the diamonds woven in his eyelids.
“A Prince of the KellKet?” said Keenan coolly. “Oh, I think you’ll guarantee us entry, my friend.”
JuJu led the way, arms bound tight behind his back. Pippa had applied hasty field-dressings to his wounded arms, and Keenan had hobbled him with raze-wire, a nasty and severe little trick he’d picked up during the Helix War. Wrapped tight around bare ankles, if JuJu tried to escape—to run too fast—he would damn near sever his feet. Blood already trickled from cut flesh and stained his toes. He left a trail of bloody footprints across the white polished bone of the walkways and sea-carved bridges.
They walked for an hour with their new guide, in silence.
Franco jogged to catch up with Keenan; he smiled. “You OK, boss?”
“Yeah, I was just wondering where Klik went.”
“I’ve a feeling we’ll meet him again.”
“Me too.”
They walked in comfortable silence for a while. Mist swirled, engulfing Combat K and their prisoner. It wavered and twisted like eels in air, a strange and almost liquid quality to its presence.
“You did well back there, mate,” said Franco, eventually.
“Cheers. You didn’t do too bad yourself. Good idea, that, the thing with the burner.”
“Just a thought. Saw it in a film once. Made me fucking jumpwhen it actually worked! But I’ll tell you something, Keenan, I’d forgotten how savage you could be.”
Keenan gave a short laugh. “Which bit?”
“Shooting the last two.”
Keenan shrugged. “They came looking for war. I gave them war.”
“Still, you kinda shocked me.”
“I have my mission to think about,” said Keenan. “I have to find the murderer of my family. It is a... need.”
“An obsession?”
“Yes.”
“Freya wouldn’t thank you.”
“Maybe not, but my girls, Franco...” He drifted into silence, lost for a while in memories. “It’s hard to explain, because you’ve never had children. Franco, when you hold your baby in your arms... Gods, it’s so hard to explain! Before, I was a tough motherfucker: drinking, women, smoking, fighting. I did what the fuck I wanted, when I wanted, and all sanctioned by the military. I’d fight hard and play hard. But when I held my first little girl in my arms, huddled up in her white blanket, the beeps of the hospital machinery surrounding me... it screwed my mind into a ball and flushed my life down the toilet. For the first time, Franco, the first time ever I came to truly understand what love meant: not the love of a woman—or even a man if you’re that way inclined—but the love of something that came from within you, was a part of you. For the first time ever, Franco, here was this tiny life, and it was something I would kill for, and something I would die for: no question, no exchange, no compromise.”
He fell into a brooding silence.
“When I was at Mount Pleasant,” said Franco, “when I wasn’t fried on a cocktail of drugs and real bad cooking, I sometimes thought about you. And I’ll be honest, Keenan, I was surprised by your contact; when you set up the rescue mission.”
“Why?”
“I thought you would have been dead, killed by your own hand.” Franco’s eyes gleamed. “I remember your grief all too clearly. I remember your desolation.”
“For years—every single fucking night—I played with the idea of eating a bullet. But all the time, at the back of my mind, I was waiting for the UF to come up with a lead. I was waiting for that call, just to say, ‘Yeah Keenan, we know who the fucker is’. I had to see him executed. Only then could I die in peace. But as the years flowed by I came to understand the case was frozen, locked in stasis, lost in the vaults of the UF HQ, and I realised the son of a bitch would never be caught. It took a long time, Franco, a fucking eternity. And then?” He laughed. It was a bitter sound. “By then my anger at the world had kind of died. Colours lost their vibrancy. Music lost its serenity. The world became bleached in shades of grey. And so I turned to...”
“The bottle?”
“Yeah. I drank myself into oblivion.”
“Hence your reaction to Klik?”
“To see somebody so young destroying himself? Franco, the whole thing stank of that loss of innocence which has always haunted me; yeah, something I carried in my soul from childhood, a state of perpetual high, a route down which I swore I would never travel. Yet, when it came, I opened my arms and embraced the evil like a long lost brother. Alcohol took me as a willing sacrifice and with a big wide evil grin. I was lost at sea, Franco, for a very long time.”
Franco slapped him on the back.
“Well Keenan, you’re back now mate, back with the old crew. And we’ll find this murderer who thinks he’s got away with it; we’ll track down the killer of your kids.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Thanks, Franco.”
“Don’t mention it, brother.”
The bridges and narrow walkways rose and fell, sometimes searing far into the sky above the white mist, sometimes dropping beneath the marsh waters and reed grasses, where tiny slick eels slid over their boots and made Franco dance in his sandals. When above the mist, the world stretched out beneath them like a sea of cotton-wool, it was almost like flying above the clouds. Mountains glittered in the distance. Far to the right, a forest sprawled, hundred-foot hardwoods, a dense and compact mass of ochre green punctuated by rare, blue-leafed conifers called Kajaya.
“How far?” asked Keenan, prodding JuJu with his MPK barrel.
The large warrior turned; he had sunk into what seemed a depression. “Not far,” he said, voice quiet, subdued. “Then you will witness the savagery of the KellKet.”
Keenan nodded, not willing to debate.
The bone walkways grew narrower, and again soared above the mist, spreading out into a thousand strands, slivers of gleaming bone that stretched and spiralled, and entwined to form a honeycomb of white. After so many hours under the claustrophobic mist the heat from the twin suns was welcome, and as they climbed a high bridge, The City of Bone was suddenly spread out before them, gleaming like diamond.
“It’s beautiful,” said Pippa, simply.
“My Home,” said JuJu. “My World. My Paradise.”
“Seen it all before,” snorted Franco. “Are there any decent brothels?”
Pippa glared at him. “Franco, you’re a heathen.”
“And proud of it!”
“Have you no soul?”
“Burned in hell many moons ago.”
They stood, panting after the climb, and surveyed The City of Bone. It sprawled as far as the eye could see; the nearest edges writhed with a thinning of mist, but there the invading white ended as eelmarsh gave way to the rising expanding city. All the buildings were a gleaming white, and mostly built from solid shells of bone-rock; there were a million different shapes, mostly carved with hard labour, and huddled in tight compounds between wide streets of paved jewels.
The roads glittered, catching the sun.
“You use precious stones to build your roads?” Franco’s eyes gleamed. Here was wealth untold, lying, quite literally, under his sandals. Or it soon would be. He wondered how long it would take to fill a sack.
“These are non-precious,” said JuJu quietly. “We have an advanced grading system; anything not meeting the required quality field is used to enhance The City of Bone. The KellKet build a fine city, yes?”
Keenan checked his map. “The Metal Palace lies at the centre, like a Hub... there.” He pointed.
JuJu nodded. “Prince Akeez has sent you on a fool’s errand.”
“Really? Ex
plain.”
JuJu’s face shut down. His jaw clamped tight. He would say no more.
“Let me cut him,” said Franco.
JuJu shrugged. “Part of our initiation to manhood is torture. You would not believe the pain I am able to withstand.”
“And you wouldn’t believe the pain I can inflict.”
“Calm yourself,” snapped Keenan. His eyes gleamed. “Down there...” He left the sentence unfinished, but it was clear to Pippa and Franco what he meant. Down there lay answers.
“Thoughts on infil?” said Pippa.
“We go in tonight, under cover of darkness.” He glanced sideways at JuJu. “You only have one hour, pretty much planet-wide, don’t you, JuJu? That means you’ve got really bad night vision; a by-product of evolution, you might say.”
JuJu said nothing.
“Trust me.” said Keenan, “the Ket-i are as blind as a bat in the dark. They call it the Death Hour; they believe the darkness is a disease you breathe into your lungs, and from there it pollutes you from the inside out. It’s a brave Ket-i who stays out after dark... and even then they claim they feel their bodies gradually decaying.”
“What about the ones back by the beach? They seemed up for a good fight?”
“Yeah, and we slaughtered them. They were stumbling around like children; probably renegades, illegals, hunted by the rest of their race. Their attack on us was desperation.”
Keenan sat, cross-legged, on the bone walkway. He laid his TuffMAPTM flat and flicked through several of the digital pages with a finger. It made a tiny clicking, whining sound.
“JuJu, we’re going to study this together. And you are going to tell me the truth, or I will feed you to the eels.”
JuJu nodded. “Your eventual death and the eating of your spine and brain will be my greatest pleasure.” He stared hard at Keenan. “Your death is marked for me, human.”
Keenan tapped the map. “OK. Show me the different routes to the Metal Palace; and show me the secret escape routes. Your people have a history of warfare and sieges; nothing like this is ever built without a secret back door, right?”
JuJu nodded.
Together, they waited for darkness.
“We ready?”
“Sorted, Keenan.”
The three members of Combat K had studied the maps closely, listening to JuJu explain the workings of the Metal Palace. Basically a warren for the ruling elite of the KellKet Ket-i clan—the
self-appointed royalty of this vicious warlike tribe—the Metal Palace was not something they had built, more something they had occupied. It was old, older than their history. The City of Bone had grown up around this apparent ancient alien artefact—alien even to the Ket—but at its core it was a relic that all dating methodology—Ket and Quad-Gal—had been unable to place. The path to the Metal Palace should harbour no great problems; after all, in their ruling arrogance the Ket did not suspect the hunting party led by JuJu to fail. Three humans? Easy meat for skilled Ket-i warriors, all the odds said so. However, forewarned was forearmed, and according to JuJu a veritable army of warriors stood between Keenan and his prize, the Fractured Emerald.
“How many guards?” asked Keenan softly.
JuJu shrugged. “A hundred, maybe two. It is our greatest artefact; you will not be allowed to take it.”
“To be honest,” said Keenan, “I’m not so much interested in theft, more in what the Fractured Emerald can tell me.”
“But you have a contract.”
“Yes, and you know of Prince Akeez; the whole situation stinks like a ten-day dog corpse. Prince Akeez can kiss my arse; his contract is forfeit. I am not doing this for Akeez, and if I am honest with you, I’ll put a bullet in his skull as soon as look at him.”
“He has betrayed you?”
“It would appear so,” said Keenan.
“Then I respect your honour. Tell me, what would you have the Fractured Emerald predict?”
“Not a prediction, more a revelation.” And Keenan explained to the hulking black warrior about his family, about their murders, about his own people’s inability to solve the crime, about his fall from grace and the clutching at straws that led him here, to this place, now, with an outlawed brain-fried combat squad wanted throughout the Quad-Gal on a GroupD prohibition which equated to instant extermination when they were—ultimately, finally—caught.
“So your friends joined you? In your hour of need? Even though they would forfeit their futures... forfeit their lives when caught?”
“Yes. We are a clan unto ourselves, and like you, we have our own honour codes. JuJu, I do not mean to trick you, but this Prince Akeez, tell me what you know of him. It’s too convenient that you know our plans; I have a sneaking suspicion that we are the decoys and he intends to instigate his own theft.”
JuJu considered this. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost a rhythmical lullaby.
“We were approached by Akeez showing all correct protocols upon entry to Ket. He spoke of a renegade outfit commissioned to steal the Fractured Emerald; that they—you—would come with heavy weaponry and murder many of our people. He said it was, intrinsically, an act of war. Later he gave us coordinates of your entry point, only they became useless when your Hornet spacecraft was blown from the heavens. Akeez was very precise with his information and calculations.”
Keenan nodded, eyes narrowed. Then he glanced at Franco and Pippa. “We’ve been set up, again. We’re being played as pawns, my friends. We’re being dicked with from high above.”
“What you going to do?” said Pippa. Her voice was velvet.
“We’re continuing with the plan.”
“Even though it’s a trap?”
“Is it a trap?” said Keenan, eyes bright on JuJu. The huge black man stared at him levelly, face unreadable, head held high in pride; with an utmost warlike bearing.
“I do not believe so,” said JuJu.
“So you will take us forward?”
“I will, but if you do mean theft, I will kill you. We will not lose our sacred prize.”
Keenan and JuJu moved away from Franco and Pippa, and spoke quietly for a couple of minutes; then Keenan smiled over at the two, nodding, rubbing his unshaved chin with a rasp of whiskers.
Keenan moved back, boots clumping on bone. He gestured to Franco. “Give JuJu a weapon.”
“What?”
“Give him a weapon, Franco.” Keenan spoke through gritted teeth.
Franco grinned and held up his hands. “Hey, do you know, for a crazy moment there I actually thought you suggested giving our captive prisoner, the one with raze-wire round his wrists and ankles, I thought you told me to give him a weapon. Ha ha.”
“And take off the wire,” snapped Keenan, turning and gazing out towards distant, staggered mountains, towering rugged peaks, flanks violated by forests of pink and grey trees; sheer violent walls reared, a parallel with the natural violence of the Ket-i people: uncompromising, unforgiving, brutal.
“Keenan...”
“We’ve got a deal,” said Keenan. “And we’re going in.”
Darkness fell.
JuJu led Combat K down narrow calciferous pathways, which finally dropped and dropped until they reached a bridge of incredibly thin white, glowing almost fluorescently in the darkness. One by one they crossed, until it was Franco’s turn and he eyed the few inches of bone rock warily, eyes narrowed, tongue licking desert lips.
“Not like,” he muttered.
“Don’t be such a big girl,” snapped Pippa.
Franco stepped onto the bridge, damp from splashes of lapping white water; then, with a sudden squawk he danced a marionette jig and tumbled back into the small circular lake where he splashed wildly for a few moments, before surfacing with a splutter, realising it was only waist deep.
“Shit,” he ejaculated.
Dark shapes moved beneath the surface; gliding dark bodies converged through the milk towards... Franco.
“Get me out!” he screeched.
&nb
sp; Keenan grinned wryly. “You muppet.”
“So much for the covert entrance.” Pippa reached out, and Franco grabbed her hand, allowing her to haul his barrel-chested frame from the stagnant water. Franco wrinkled his nose, glancing back at the eels, which arced through the white, then disappeared once the promise of a sudden feed had vanished.
“Little buggers would have chomped my legs! I’m really not liking eels very much! Especially the promise of poisonous ones! And pooh! Now I stink a pretty stink! A stink of eel mush and rotting eel eye stink! I stink so bad. I stink I do.” It was an acute observation.
“Elegant,” smiled Pippa curtly.
“Come. We must hurry,” said JuJu.
And trailing stagnant milk droplets, Franco followed the others, mumbling and moaning, into the encroaching darkness.
They walked down narrow bone-sand streets. JuJu led the group with care, eyes alert, head flicking from left to right as he scanned for Combat K’s enemies. As they moved, Franco still pondered the warrior’s odd motivations; the whole thing stank worse than a stagnant stinking fish supper to Franco’s mind, and still he couldn’t quite work out Keenan’s angle. So, he thought, brow wrinkled, scratching at his shaved ginger head, and rubbing his bushy beard, if JuJu takes us to the Fractured Emerald, and the gem tells Keenan what he wants to know, then we leave it alone. JuJu will be happy, and Keenan will be happy. And, that way, we leave without a fight! But I thought they were a warlike people? Living for war and all that guff? Why would JuJu do that? Hmm?
He pondered as they moved down narrow streets.
Something was notright.
Franco’s attention diverted to the immediate; the immediate fact that he was soaked, and not just with any old water, but with something akin to milk shit from a cesspit creature. His clothing, sopping wet, rubbed at him in places he would rather not be rubbed, and a curious itching had transgressed up and down his spine in a most uncomfortable fashion. Reaching back, Franco scratched with the muzzle of his MPK; and realised in horror that the safety was off. A ND at himself would not be the best way to get this mission finalised.