War Machine (The Combat-K Series)

by Andy Remic

  Keenan stopped and stared hard at the Fractured Emerald.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Pippa, voice honey.

  “It must be worth a fortune!” boomed Franco boorishly. “Just think of... think of the whores!”

  Keenan stared, entranced, but at the same time wary. Something prickled his scalp. He shivered. He glanced left, then right, and blinked, seeing for the first time the black throne carved of black bone. A woman sat on the throne, petite and delicate, almost painfully thin, her skin a deep and vibrant ebony, her beauty in her slim nakedness stunning. Her skin was oiled, and her black hair tumbled and fell in deep rich ringlets. The glow of the Fractured Emerald shone reflected in her narrowed green eyes, and the surreal witch-light made her veins stand out green against her black skin.

  “Who is she?” gawped Franco, staring hard. It was not often he saw a woman in the nude, especially not in the middle of a dangerous mission, and especiallynot during the theft of a priceless and magical artefact. Franco’s priapism knew no bounds.

  The woman, eyes glowing almost regally, surveyed Combat K. She smiled with full wet lips; parted them a little, a sensual and almost sexual movement.

  Keenan looked back to the emerald; its pulse seemed to quicken, seemed to match his heartbeat. He turned, face on, to the woman, lowered his head a little and stared at her, hard.

  “Come on,” growled Pippa.

  “Yeah,” snapped Franco, “let’s grab the gem and do one.”

  “Something’s wrong.” Keenan’s voice was hushed, husky. He remained, gaze fixed on the woman.

  “This ain’t the time for an erection, compadre,” said Franco with irony.

  The woman stood, elegantly, and swayed before the black throne. Keenan was transfixed, like a snake before a charmer. She took a step towards him, then another, and a third. Her hands came up and rested lightly on his shoulders.

  “Keenan,” said Pippa, with almost a wail in her voice.

  “This is her,” said Keenan.

  “Who?”

  “The Fractured Emerald. It isn’t the gem; is it?” He stared down into her eyes. His face was serene, a totality of relaxation, of understanding, of calm. “It’s a misconception, the automatic reaction of a greedy bunch of nomads and thieves. The Fractured Emerald isn’t a gem of incredible worth, it’s a woman, a woman of power.”

  She nodded. When she spoke, it was as if angels sang. “My name is Emerald,” she said, voice husky and deeply, deeply feminine. She moved closer to Keenan, pressing up tight against him. Again, his head lowered until their lips were only an inch apart.

  “Look at her veins,” said Pippa, voice hushed in awe.

  Keenan stared down past her face; every vein in her body pulsed green, pulsed as if linked to the gem; or the gem linked to the power of this unorthodox individual.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kiss me,” said Emerald, “and I will know you, understand you. I will delve your deepest desires and fears and needs. I will flow with your saliva and blood and semen. I will be a part of you and you of me, fluid, joined, together for eternity.”

  Keenan kissed her.

  He could not help himself.

  The kiss lasted for an eternity. He flowed through her veins and knew her and understoodher. She was not of Ket; she was a prisoner in this place, used for her powers of prophecy, her ability to see into the future, and into the past. To use her was to become a part of her; and she of you. That way she gained immortality.

  Keenan felt himself staring out from a dying world: a black desert world, staring out into the fathomless voids of space; out into a bleak infinity filled with nothing. And he understood, truly understood what it meant to be alone. A scream welled through him as he felt himself slip, slip and tumble into that bleak everything of emptiness, but then she was there, guiding him, holding him, sharing him, and that kiss, that simple kiss was more intimate than any conversation or sharing or holding or loving, more deep and integral than any simple act of copulation; they were one. They were together. Keenan opened his eyes, pulled away from her sweetness, gasped and dropped suddenly to his knees.

  “Keenan!” Pippa was there, beside him, holding him, and he gasped and choked as if his entire insides had been sucked free. He rolled over, onto his side as Pippa coolly stood and levelled her MPK in Emerald’s face. “What have you done to him, fucker?”

  Emerald ignored the gun, turned, and moved back to the throne. She sat, drew her legs up beneath her, and then looked beyond Combat K, staring off into the blackness of the vast and empty chamber.

  “Keenan!” snapped Pippa again, kneeling, confused, torn, but he patted her arm and managed to crawl back to his knees. He forced himself to stand, to breathe deeply; he met the gaze of the Fractured Emerald and gritted his teeth in pain.

  “You are trapped here.”

  “Yes.”

  “A prisoner of the Ket-i?”

  “Yes.”

  “They use you to predict enemy movements; they use you as a tool of war?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want us to free you?”

  “I do as I am told.” She looked back at Keenan, meeting his gaze. “I am a machine, a magician, a prophet, a soothsayer, a tool; I am a thing of the ground, an element from deep beneath The Mountain, to be used and,” she laughed softly and her voice held the resonance of dying worlds, “abused.”

  “What do you want from me?” breathed Keenan.

  “From you?” She smiled. “I want nothing. But you require information from me. You need me to trace the stems back to reality; to focus on those threads which are Connect Integral and for me to tell you the name, the identity, the code-call of the person who took away those whom you loved and still love.”

  “Yes!” breathed Keenan, lips wet.

  “I can see Eternity,” said Emerald. Her eyes glowed. “I can see beyond Time. I can see the pulse of The Galaxy Soul.”

  “You do want something,” snapped Keenan in a moment of primitive intuition. He stood. He approached the black bone throne. He knelt before Emerald, reached out, and touched her oil-slick skin. His fingers seemed to melt into her, and he rubbed idly at her thighs without cognition.

  “Yes. You are perceptive.” She smiled. It was a smile on an alien face, a smile formed by an imitator using second-hand muscles.

  “What do you want?”

  “You must take me to Teller’s World.”

  “That’s a Forbidden Place, a place of a Dead GodRace. It is death to go there.”

  “And so. Yes.”

  “Nobody has left that place alive, not in a million years of recorded Quad-Galactic history.”

  “This is my price for information. You accept?”

  Keenan glanced back at Franco and Pippa, who stood with their useless wasted weapons, eyes wide, stunned by what was happening, by this interaction between man and...

  What is she? thought Pippa, mind a maelstrom. Pippa glanced at Franco, then focused on Keenan. She gave a little shake of her head. “Kee,” she said, “to do that is to welcome death.”

  “What do you want there?” said Keenan, ignoring Pippa’s plea, the simple desperation in her voice. They knew; they all knew. A million people had visited Teller’s World. Not a single one—notone—had returned. It was a place of fabled treasure, of infinite danger, of the promise, the immortal promise, of revealing a fabled Leader... and for some brave and fearless treasure-seeker, supplying the answers to Eternity: Eternal Life, Immortal Power, To... becomea God...

  “I want to regain my former position, to become what I once was, to grow strong again! To grow proud again! And then—when I have tasted the Galaxy Soul once more—then I can die,” said Emerald. She blinked, slowly and lazily.

  “I will take you there,” said Keenan, giving a single nod. He turned back to Franco and Pippa; they understood. He intended to take her alone, and to die, if necessary, in the process.

  “No problem,” growled Franco
, mask a frown. “We’ll fly in there, drop you off, get the intel, fight whatever dark unholy creature has killed a million people and eaten Battle Cruisers whole, and then pop back for a spot of lunch: piece of piss. No problem for a solid MPK and a heart of pumping stupidity.” He scowled at Keenan. “Dickhead.”

  “First you must free me,” said Emerald, and touched her breast. Keenan saw a tiny black square against her flesh, the size of his thumbnail. It reminded him of a computer chip. Emerald smiled again, only this time her eyes were hard, hard and brittle, and unforgiving. “This is my controller.”

  “Yes!” boomed a voice, and bright light flooded the vault.

  Keenan, Pippa and Franco started. They were surrounded: surrounded by a thousand Ket-i warriors, carrying Laz-Spears and a small arsenal of heavy weaponry. The army moved forward in a line, a wall, a circle, closing in swiftly on Combat K... and the Fractured Emerald.

  “Told you it was a set-up,” muttered Franco from the corner of his mouth.

  As the circle closed, and halted with a booming of Laz-Spears striking the bone floor, one Ket-i warrior came closer and stopped. He was adorned with a hundred gold trinkets and chains, head held high, a mantle of emerald spikes bone-welded to his skull and spine. His forearm blades had been repaired after his savage wounding, and his eyes glowed with power and...

  Insanity, thought Pippa.

  “First you must free her,” said JuJu, head turning, surveying the group. “And the only way to do that is to destroy her, for she is a creature you cannot understand, cannot comprehend. She may never leave this place. She mustnever leave this place. That is why she is Controlled.”

  Keenan strode towards JuJu and stared up at the huge warrior, up into his eyes. “I thought we had a deal,” he said.

  JuJu shook his head. “I understand you, Keenan. I sympathise with you, but I cannot allow you to take the Fractured Emerald and break the promise of a million years. She is a danger to all life in the Quad-Gal. You cannot understand this concept; it is from before a time of Humanity. She is my Ward, my Prisoner, my Nemesis.”

  “She is your victim,” snarled Keenan.

  JuJu shrugged and smiled. “Yes, imprisoned. Her want and need is of little consequence. What matters is that she remains here, trapped and powerless. Ket is a harsh place, Keenan, a harsh place to live and a harsh place to die. You could never understand; you are not Ket-i. You know not our history, nor our lore, nor our legends.”

  Keenan nodded.

  “What happens now?” His voice was low, dangerous. His stance a hairline trigger. “I fight you and if I win, then everything’s OK? That seems to be your way; the way of Ket.”

  “No, Keenan. You fight the Fractured Emerald; if she wins, you die.”

  “And if I win?”

  “You will not win.”

  JuJu carried something in his hand: a small alloy device strapped to his wrist, which he turned. He glanced past Keenan, to the dark carved throne where Emerald sat, legs drawn beneath her, face touched by the fear of the enslaved. Her eyes narrowed and she stared from behind her mortal mask with a pure and undisguised hatred.

  “No,” she crooned, voice suddenly inhuman and filled with tiny clicks.

  “Keenan!” hissed Pippa. “JuJu is...” but her words were cut off by a tremendous cracking of bone and tendon. Emerald rolled forward from the throne, and as she hit the ground she suddenly distorted. Her limbs twisted and bent backwards, all four moving and striking the ground together and thrusting her body into a central taut stance, so she resembled a four-legged spider, back-broken, legs formed from human limbs. She screamed; her howl rent the cold air. The green gem in the column pulsed faster, and liquid emerald flowed hot through the alien’s veins.

  The surrounding warriors smashed their spears once again into the ground with a crashing boom. They began to chant, the words primitive, simple, primeval. The chanting increased in pace as Emerald bucked and twisted, gyrated at angles impossible to the human form. She scuttled backward and forward between throne and column as her hands and feet elongated into black, armoured points. Her body shed a thin film of black skin, leaving the gleam of oiled insect carapace. With further cracking sounds, bones rearranged themselves, her head dropped, neck twisting with a series of bone-jarring crunches, black armour spreading like cancer across her inverted face in panels, until only the green glowing eyes remained, staring out from an insectile form so far removed from a human shell as to be something ejaculated from nightmare.

  Keenan had taken several steps back, realising that the Ket warriors had formed not just into a circle, but into an... arena.

  The creature that had been Emerald stopped its pain-filled gyrations and turned, focusing on Keenan. A low sibilant hissing emerged and armoured mandibles clicked, rubbing together. Long strings of saliva fell from the distorted face; a pulped, almost human face; the eyes were fixed on Keenan, locked to him with a focus of steel.

  “Shit.” He laughed in horror. He glanced at Pippa and Franco, who had also backed away as far as the wall of Laz-Spears would allow. Pippa gave a little shrug and eased into the relaxed stance of combat that Keenan had witnessed a thousand times past. Franco dragged round his pack and started rummaging for a bomb.

  “JuJu, you are disgracing your tribe,” hissed Keenan. His MPK was solid and real in his hands, but he was loath to use it; how could he? If he killed Emerald then he would kill the knowledge he so craved. How could he destroy that which would be his ultimate saviour?

  “Prince Akeez thought a simple group of mercenaries could release That Which Was Enslaved.” JuJu shook his head, high spikes glinting with shearing light. “You are all fools: master and servants alike.”

  Keenan tensed for battle; his mind flowed cold and brittle. All thoughts of knowledge and information, and reading backwards into the seeds of time were dispelled as Emerald, rotating with a clatter of iron claws on bone, leapt with a sudden flashing blur of speed which had Keenan stumbling back in panic, MPK firing a line of howling bullets on instinct. Rounds rattled up Emerald’s armoured belly and she landed, lightly, one claw lashing out to slice the MPK clean in half. The dead sub-machine gun spun across the bone ground. Keenan leapt away, narrowly avoiding being severed at the waist.

  He landed in a crouch.

  Emerald attacked with the savagery of a lightning strike.

  An armoured point ripped a tear through Keenan’s WarSuit and opened the flesh of his chest. Keenan gasped as pain slammed him, and he staggered back, feeling a warm flush of blood beneath the suit, feeling the armour’s shrill cry of damage, and watching numbly as Emerald circled him and he clutched his own cut flesh. Skin and muscle parted beneath questing fingers, a sick gaping mouth.

  It sliced a WarSuit, screamed his mind.

  It does not remember what it was.

  In horror Keenan realised he could not fight this creature, could not kill this creature. With an insight that cursed his brain he suddenly understood: this thingwas old, older than humanity, older than the Ket-i; what had JuJu said? She was a danger to all life in the Quad-Gal? From a time before Humanity?

  Emerald looked at him. A black maw grinned treacle saliva.

  And it nodded towards him, swaying.

  It gave him Insight... sprinkled his mind with confused understanding.

  Bright lights glittered.

  Emerald was Old Life.

  Emerald was a Servant of a long extinct GodRace.

  Emerald was a Servant of Leviathan.

  Part 4

  Redemption Song

  Chapter 13

  Cerebral Fracture

  Betezh squatted in the jungle, smeared with grime, exhausted, eyelids drooping, but an edge of fear kept him clinging to consciousness, and wondering just what the hell his next move could be.

  After escaping the Gem Rig and paddling off across the Milk Sea like some diseased and grotty Gollum, Betezh had soon realised that the engines on the Raptor Boat had been disabled, immobilised. Oh, how he had smiled
nastily at that: Franco’s last laugh? You bet.

  And so, Betezh floated for long endless hours, dragged this way and that by tides more powerful than anything he could have dreamed, more forceful than anything against which he could simply paddle. Ket was a savage planet and the Milk Sea was no different. Occasionally, he’d paddle furiously in the hope he could achieve some distance, but, alone, a single oar against the wilds of Ket Nature, it was a useless thankless task.

  The bastard known as Franco, eternal thorn in Betezh’s side, had efficiently disabled Betezh’s escape, crippled him. Betezh was a soldier, a murderer, could even pull off a reasonable impression of a doctor specialising in mental breakdown, but a mechanic he was not. Yes, he could hack away at a simple engine, but the beasts that lurked in this craft were beyond his admittedly simple engineering skills.

  He floated for eternity, his shaved head reddening alarmingly under the beating suns. He cursed, double-cursed and triple-cursed Franco Haggis; it had seemed such a simple mission. Contain the maggot at Mount Pleasant. No problem, a walk in the park, easy peasy. But through a series of unfortunate escalations, Betezh found himself up shit creek... yes, with a paddle, but a paddle that was useless in the face of an aggressive tidal system hell-bent on his demise.

  Betezh floated, bobbed, rode waves, sank troughs.

  He muttered, a lot, cursing Franco, cursing the Gods, and, ultimately, cursing his boss Vitch the Bitch. “What a bitch,” he would grumble to himself, before splashing around uselessly with his paddle for a while, then giving up—always giving up—and lying back, baking in the boat, tortured skin nagging him with a pain he tried—unsuccessfully—to push away.

  Night fell.

  With it came a relief from the agonies of torturing sunlight. Without water—an important oversight—Betezh wheezed and panted, moaned and groaned; a twig tongue probed bark lips.