by Andy Remic
“Steinhauer recruited the psychos,” said Pippa savagely, “and there was only one reason for that; we were fucking expendable.” She laughed a bitter laugh. “You talk of nobility and atonement; that’s a crock of shit, Em. Personally, there can never be atonement for the things I did. I made my choices, and I don’t need no alien speaking on my behalf. I know what I did, and I live with it. I’ll live with it until I die. I don’t need your fucking permission, and I don’t need to be patronised.” She stood, burning with fury, and left the cockpit.
“Don’t mind her,” said Franco, settling back into his seat. “She’s always hot-headed. She’ll calm down. You’ll see. She’ll be cooking us a fine beef pie in the next half hour, and right tasty it’ll be. Yummy in my tummy.”
Emerald nodded. “One thing is for sure,” she said. Her eyes glittered like jewels.
“What’s that?” asked Keenan. His face was haunted by images of a distant past; events he had forced himself—until now—to forget. He had not just taken the key; he had purposefully dropped it down a bottomless well.
Keenan took a deep breath.
Emerald smiled with sincerity.
“You’re the right people to make sure I die,” she said.
Chapter 15
Black Planet
It was cramped and unbearably hot inside Mr. Max’s Interceptor. The ship slammed up from Ket and, as one sun gleamed through the port window, Betezh turned and watched an idle sparkling array of fire dance across his vision. Greens, blues, oranges, yellows, all merged and coalesced, fanning out, before fading from view as Mr. Max accelerated at a phenomenal rate.
“Where are we going?”
“Classified.”
“When will we get there?”
“Classified.”
“What kind of ship is this?”
“Classified.”
“This is going to be a real long journey, Max, if all you can say is ‘classified’.”
Mr. Max turned and smiled a smile full of teeth. “I didn’t pick you up for your companionship, Betezh. I picked you up because General Kotinevitch thinks you are valuable to the War Effort. I, however, have serious reservations.” He looked Betezh up and down, as one would a particularly mangy cat.
“You’re quite an un-likeable fellow, really,” said Betezh.
“I’m not here to be liked. I’m here to get the job done.”
“Still, there are certain protocols regarding manners that allow a person to act as a simple human being.”
“Who said I was interested in being a human being?”
Betezh shrugged and settled back. He was red and sweating, and could feel trickles running down inside his clothing, which aggravated his sunburn. This did not put him in a mood for bantering with—in his opinion—a retard, or at least, retarded in the sense of one who could not control his actions, or tongue.
The Interceptor hummed. It cruised fast at illegal speeds and proximities. Mr. Max did not care. His middle name was “illegal”. To Mr. Max, rules were for somebody else to obey.
“This is an Interceptor, right?” said Betezh eventually.
Mr. Max gave him a foul look. “Your point is?”
“They’re military, classified, as you said earlier.”
“Your point?”
Betezh sighed. “Ahh, mate, I’d always heard rumours about you; I’d heard you were a skull-fucking, arse-sucking, mind-bending, anti-human, shit-filled son of a bitch.”
Betezh stared down the barrel of a gun. He had not seen Mr. Max move. However, the weapon was there, a 9mm bore directed straight at his brain. Betezh swallowed. He laughed woodenly, without humour.
“Of course, they were views I never subscribed to myself. Just stuff I heard, y’know? In the canteen, by other people.” He gritted his teeth in a non-smile, “Other people who were, you know, ignorant to your finer salient points and obvious sensitive nature.”
Mr. Max removed the gun smoothly.
“Keep your mouth shut. Or I’ll knock out your teeth.”
“Fine, fine.”
“And don’t think I’m being unreasonable,” said Mr. Max. “I saw the torture you put Franco Haggis through at the Mount Pleasant Institute. You had your moments of sadism, Betezh. Now keep it shut while I navigate this worm-field; I don’t want to find the ship covered in fucking SPAWS. Or we’ll both end up dead. And, I don’t want to end up dead, because Iam Mr. Max.”
“General Kotinevitch.”
“Mr. Max.” Her voice was cool, controlled, in command. “Did you manage to locate Betezh?”
“I found him. He’s here. Unfortunately, he survived.”
“Very droll. Are things going to plan?”
“With a sweet precision,” said Mr. Max, “although I have altered a few timings.”
“Why?”
“There were some random factors introduced to my timeline. The Fractured Emerald reacted as we predicted, unfortunately, and has helped Combat K to escape from Ket. I could not get there in time to halt integration.”
“So you have not yet killed Combat K?”
“No.”
“But you will do so.” It was not a question.
“Yes, when we land on Teller’s World.”
“Isn’t that cutting it close to the bone?”
Mr. Max shrugged. He enjoyed listening to Vitch’s voice; it gave him some glimmer of sexual arousal; although he had to admit, of late, even that basic desire was fading. Age was encroaching; it was a feeling he did not relish.
“The job will not be difficult. Even should I fail, I have a little helper who will get the job done.”
The camera tilted to Vitch, and zoomed in on a small, black metal casing. It had several panels removed, showing a massively intricate interior. Lights flickered across the shell, mostly red.
“Is that his PopBot?”
“Yes, a basic security device. It calls itself Cam.” Mr. Max laughed. “Seems to think it’s alive.”
“You will booby-trap it?”
“Of course.”
“What with?”
“StrangleTox.”
“Nasty.”
“When I want them dead, I want them dead.”
“Will Emerald intervene? After all, she will be growing in power as she closes on to The Factory.”
Mr. Max’s eyes gleamed. “No, Emerald will be a good little girl.”
“Betezh, are you there?”
“Yes, lady.”
“Don’t do anything foolish, and do not—I repeat—do not aggravate Mr. Max. I need you alive, at least for now. Accompany him to Teller’s World; do anything he asks.”
“Teller’s World?” Betezh’s voice quavered and he hated himself for it. He did not want to die. “Nobody ever leaves,” he hissed. “It is a Forbidden Place.”
“You fool. The picture is bigger than the living sphere can ever imagine. Do what you are told. I will rendezvous on Teller with both of you, and we will see what song Emerald sings.”
“You are coming to Teller’s World?” Betezh sounded incredulous.
“Of course,” said Vitch. “I want to see Combat K die with my own eyes.”
“You know, the further we travel in deep space, and the longer the actual journey, the darker it always seems. You know what I mean? It’s like we’ve entered a tunnel and we’re cruising further and further into the emptiness of the void. Stars seem less bright; suns dim.” He shivered. “It’s like being buried alive.”
“Sounds like a childhood fear to me,” said Pippa, sipping her coffee.
Franco shook his head. “No, no, this is something weirder, deeper, like an affliction, a disease or something.”
“I thought you liked that feeling?” said Keenan, turning from the controls. “I thought it gave you a buzz?”
Franco frowned. “What the hell are you talking about? I never said that! I’ve never, ever said that. You know I like cities. I like the brothels and bars, the slack women and mugs of beer. Where the heck do you find a woman rea
dy to sit on your face in space?”
“I meant the tunnel metaphor,” said Keenan.
“What metaphor?”
“You know? Long tunnel... equals vagina.”
“I never said that!”
“But you meant it,” said Pippa.
Keenan grinned. Franco put down his bowl of cereal, and milk hung in droplets on his ginger beard. “Franco, my man, I love you to bits, but you never, ever shut up about sex. You’re depraved. You’re a maniac. You’re a down and out fucking deviant. But hey, we’ve got used to your little foibles; we even like you, sometimes, well, occasionally, when your depraved ranting doesn’t get in the way of a mission.”
Franco pouted. “Listen, how can I help it if I’m priapic? How can I help it if my testosterone levels are so damn high I could take a different woman to bed every single night of my life and still have room for more? I’m the man who put sex into sexual, the gas into orgasm. Guys, I put the cunt into cuntry.” He beamed.
“The sex into sexual?” queried Pippa. “Yeah, right.”
“Don’t mock!”
“Yeah, don’t mock,” said Keenan. “Little Franco here is just the product of a warped, hedonistic and sexist society. Ain’t that right mate? A woman’s for life, not just for Christmas. Or maybe it’s the other way round.”
Pippa yawned. “Look guys, I’m turning in. Much as it’s fun to sit here bandying words with a sexist moron, that foray on Ket really took it out of me; the damned heat!” She stood and made for the cockpit archway. She yawned again. “Have you seen Emerald?”
“She’s staying in the Hold, says she needs space to think, finds the ship claustrophobic.”
Pippa nodded. “OK. Goodnight, guys.”
Franco stood. “You want some company?”
Pippa stared at him. “That question is below contempt.”
“Still.” He winked. “If you need somebody to warm your cockles during the long flight through space towards an impossible mission and the certainty of an untimely demise, you know where to find me.”
“Yeah Franco, I know where to find you.”
She disappeared.
Franco winked at Keenan, and rubbed at his beard. “I think I’m gradually wearing her down.”
“You think so, do you?”
“Yeah.” He missed the sarcasm in Keenan’s tone, or ignored it. “How long we got on this crate? Three weeks you said, right? OK. OK, three weeks... yeah, I think I can crack this particular honey-filled coconut.”
“Hmm,” said Keenan, and watched Franco disappear with the sort of macho stride reserved for wooden heroes in action movies.
Keenan stared out from the cockpit. Black filled his vision. Occasionally, something distant would glitter, just the hint of, well, if not exactly life then at least existence: the concept that they weren’t simply floating through a vast and fathomless nothing, an eternity of darkness, an Infinity Void.
Some people get space crazy, he realised idly as he pulled out a tiny battered tape-wrapped Skooby—a metallic storage unit—and clicked it into the console. He turned a dial to the smaller, right hand screen and sat back, face locked into something more than rigidity. Images flickered rhythmically across the screen: images from Keenan’s past, and he closed his eyes and thought back over the long cold years; thought back to a past life, and a different time and a different world. Slowly, tears trickled down his cheeks. The Gunship’s engines hummed.
And, remembering his children, sleep gradually claimed him.
Pippa emerged for a glass of water. Dressed in black cotton pyjamas, she padded through the silent halls and corridors of the Gunship. The alloy walkways were cold, hard, uncomfortable beneath her toes, and as she passed the cockpit, she glanced at Keenan, asleep, could hear his gentle snores. She stopped for a moment, paused uncertainly; then she peered in, and caught sight of his screen. Images scrolled on the console screensaver, scenes from Keenan’s previous life: a life with a wife, and two young daughters. There: Keenan lay on his back, on a red and white striped rug with Rachel and Ally, both girls attacking him with the vigour of youth, mouths wide in laughter, eyes sparkling as they beat up daddy. Keenan was looking back over his shoulder towards the camera; his eyes shone, were alive, pleading for rest from the torture. There: Keenan walking towards the camera along a metal road. His head was lowered, eyes hidden from the shot, each arm extended, twin umbilicals at the end of which grew and swung his daughters. Rachel had hold of him with both hands, was in the act of trying to wrench his arm off. Ally was more demure, more laid back. She walked alongside daddy, glancing off to her left, and the deep drop that tumbled down grey rocks to a gleaming blue lagoon ringed by yellow trees. There: Keenan asleep on a brown leather settee, looking cramped and uncomfortable, both girls encircled in his powerful arms, and all three snoring with looks of comfortable innocence tattooed on faces. They were conjoined in serenity.
Pippa stepped back into the corridor, bare feet scuffing the alloy, but just as she retreated, the images changed again, and she caught a glimpse of a pretty face, a young woman, laughing with hair tossed back. She was white skinned, smooth and pale, with cream roses woven in her hair. It was Freya, Keenan’s dead wife, on the day of their wedding.
Pippa stood for a long time in the corridor, head lowered, eyes masked by the gloom. Finally, she seemed to wake, to breathe again, and she padded to the mess, to the InfinityChef, and ordered a glass of water. She sipped the sterile liquid, and carried it back to her SleepCell.
Pippa pulled her pyjama top over her head, hair lifting in disarray, breasts riding high as she tugged free the black cotton slip and dropped it at her pretty feet. She reached behind her back, undid her bra, and released her full breasts to the cool air of the ChillCell. Franco gazed longingly, but did not move, did not breathe for fear that this moment would die if he acknowledged its existence. Pippa stepped forward, smiling, lips wet, and kissed him. She tasted sweet oh so sweet and his tongue probed savouring the contact the moment the meeting of physicality of flesh of this the most intimate of intimate connections: the simple and perfect kiss. Her hands ran down his powerful body. He felt her squeezing him, appreciating his solidity, his rigid muscles, his power. Her hands moved between his legs towards his hardness then danced away tantalisingly: prick-tease. He opened his eyes then, grinned, and revelled in the taste of liquor on her lips, and on his. His hands slid down her smooth powerful taut flanks. They reached her rounded muscular buttocks and tugged down her pyjamas with her underwear; he dropped to a kneeling position, pulled Pippa’s pants down to the floor and glanced up, face to cunt, revelling in this holy vision. Franco licked his lips, leant forward a little, and nuzzled her sweetness. Her hands took his shaved head and gripped hard, and he heard an animal groan a million miles away and in a different century. “Yes, Franco,” she said, hands rubbing his head in eagerness, desire, need, lust, want. He pushed her back and felt her fold willingly over the couch and her legs parted so easily so readily. He pushed his face deep into her, tasted her, tasted her drug honey and inhaled the heady thick aroma of the moment. Her flesh was firm and young and sweet. He toyed with her, using teeth and tongue to bring squeals of delight and then his tongue traced a spiral through her warm slick nectar flesh, up her belly and across her right breast, lingering for long moments on her aroused nipple and aureole. Then he was on top her, his erection iron and hurting so hard to be inside he thought he would die. He kissed her again, enjoying the moment of sex honey on both tongues then he reached down, parted her athletic willing legs, found the soft hot eager place and sank inside her and fell fell fell tumbled down and down, and down the never-ending spiral into an indescribable euphoria which took him and closed claws around him and brought him almost immediately to a point of climax and held him there, toying, teasing him, as Pippa’s perfect muscle control locked him tight at the brink of orgasm and they were One.
Pippa looked up from the novel, allowing plastic pages to whish back to the contents. “Yeah?”
“You sure?”
“Oh yeah,” said Keenan. Then added, “And... no, I can’t, I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to tell you.”
“Tell me,” she growled.
“I heard him utter your name.”
“So I wasfucking right!” she snapped. She sprang from the bed, and Keenan back-pedalled hurriedly to get out of her way. In her black pyjamas—and wearing white socks against the hard sterility of the alloy walkways—Pippa hurtled down the corridor.
Keenan grimaced, winced, sighed, and almost reluctantly went back to the cockpit... and lost memories.
“Yes, yes, yes!” roared Franco, fucking her hard fucking her right slamming her crying and screaming into another place another realm another world of ecstasy and swaying writhing bucking fucking pleasure.
“Fuck me Franco, fuck me harder! Yes, yes, yes! Fuck me like I want to be fucked!”
Franco obliged, sweat stinging his eyes, lost inside the animal, lost to the world, lost to all of Creation.
“Well fuck me,” said Pippa.
Franco stared down into her eyes, only half-noting the subtle shift in her tone. Slowly, his humping decelerated, and he blinked, blinked again, and the words: USER INTERRUPTION flicked like a V sign across his vision. Franco cursed. Then he realised the vulnerability of his position. He disengaged from the Immersion Console, and back in the real world, back in cold stark reality and existence, he stared down at his naked—and somewhat erect—form, half-submerged in the gooey Immersion Bath. Yellow slime slopped around his nakedness, and his erection stood like a priapic periscope in a sea of toxic custard.
Very slowly, Franco turned his head.