War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (18 page)

And he remembered no more.

“I know you. You’re McEvoy, aren’t you?” said Pippa, pushing past Keenan. She still held her Makarov, but submissively. That could soon change.

The old man smiled, showing square coffee-stained teeth. “Yes, Pippa my dear.”

“Oh.” Keenan’s face had tumbled into a frown. “McEvoy. That piece of unholy shit.” His eyes fixed in an iron bar stare. “I remember you, mate, you were prettier before the blade.”

“Yeah,” Pippa nodded. “He’s been on the cover of
TIME
magazine. Regular media chaser, aren’t you McEvoy? The sort of maggot who likes the sound of his own burrowing. Especially into rotten meat.”

“You do flatter me so, Pippa.
Drop your weapon.”

Behind him Keenan suddenly became aware of sub-machine guns raised. The private army was no longer dormant; it was active
.
A clanking echoed across the hall as a GG AI strode purposefully forward, metal feet ringing, hands flexing almost uncontrollably as if in some parody of a human ailment.

There came a
shring
and the GG held a Sliver Sword, forged from a single molecule and deadly enough to cut armoured hull steel. The GG halted beside McEvoy, blade tip towards the ground and unnaturally still. Pippa’s eyes had followed the tip of that blade, then locked on the black eyes of the robot.

She dropped her gun with a clatter.

“Good girl,” said McEvoy. He seemed to relax a little, although he had not seemed unduly apprehensive. The tension in the air settled like ash. Keenan looked squarely at Pippa.

“How can you know him?” asked Rebekka, voice soft.

Pippa nodded. “When we pulled that job in New Prague helping the refugees after their fifty-year civil war; this fucker supplied TASK-K with the seeding apparatus. Only it was untested, a pirate-breed concoction of alien toxins that didn’t helpthe people, but instead caused a mass poisoning of millions
.
We were sent after the bastard. He fled in an ASP Fighter, which Keenan shot down. It ploughed into the city, pulping its inhabitants like mashed cat food.” She glanced from Rebekka back to McEvoy and smiled sweetly. “I hear they had to scrape your brother from the floor with a shovel and pile him neatly in a bodysack. They incinerated the worthless piece of garbage as an act of cleansing; after all, he was nothing more than a diseased avatar.”

McEvoy disengaged from his casual air. Sobriety etched his face like acid. “So, Mr. Keenan, you see my motive for wanting a little chat. Although I am under no misconception that Pippa here is just as guilty; guilt by proxy, shall we say?”

He glanced to the GG; it was a new machine, black matt alloy and gleaming. “Did you find him?”

“Yes.” The AI spoke in the usual clipped format of the AI; trying to be human, but not quite getting it right. “Too human to be human”, ran the marketing motto, and they were probably right. “We have him targeted. Will bring him in when the moment is right. He’s in a politically unstable region and with the upcoming Magu Elections we don’t want to stir up trouble in different zones. We’ll do it with discretion.”

“Good lad.” McEvoy glanced at Keenan, and waved to Rebekka who was peeping out from the battered container. “Ahh, my little Miss Kobayashi, so nice of you to join us. Our timing was not quite right; you were supposed to die with your crew. Your underground illegal exploits have not gone unnoticed by the Syndicate, and your slap on the wrist is long overdue.”

Rebekka visibly paled. She said nothing, just stood with arms limp by her lithe sides.

Three tiny prisonerscame out of nowhere
.

All three were struck with liquid darts; within half a second their legs folded beneath them and they collapsed. McEvoy strode to stand above Keenan, staring down at his drug-slack features. “It’ll be a shame to exterminate you,” he acknowledged. His eyes moved to Pippa. “And you, my pretty little bag of damaged goods.”

But then, he mused, a dark smile touching his lips as he considered the incurable cancer that was eating parasitically through his own bones... death comes to us all, does it not?

Franco opened one eye and peered beadily about. Everything was quiet. That was good. Nobody was inflicting violence on him, even better!
And
he wasn’t covered in vomit! Rasta Billy!

Then he tried to move his hands. He was tied to a metal chair.

“Bugger.”

A quick succession of command scripts rioted through his brain. Where am I? What happened? Why can I taste sour Guinness? Then he remembered: Cam, right-hook, rain, bar, Louis, Betezh, violence, skull-injection, pool cue. Ahh, he thought.

“Bugger.”

The hotel room—and it was quite obviously a hotel room—was nice, in a kind of cosy, middle-class, flowery wallpapered Sunday-afternoon sort of way. Outside, the binary rain had stopped and beams of sunlight filtered through chinks in the curtains. Franco tried to rock the chair, but it was immovable. He tried to free his hands, tight behind his back, but the raze-wire dug deep and he stopped immediately. A man could sever his hands with that evil shit. The more you pulled, the more it bit. And, like a rabid bulldog dangling from your tackle, it wasn’t coming off without a fight.

Franco examined his surroundings with more care: flowery thick carpet, in need of a vacuum; flowery faded wallpaper, in need of a sponging; bed, wide, crumpled, in need of fifteen naked whores
.
Calm yourself, he thought. Gods, too long in Mount Pleasant! Ironically, the thing Franco
most needed
was a pleasant mount.

Instead, he got Betezh.

The door clicked shut, and Betezh limped forward, composure regained, leg strapped tight with bone-bolts. A tiny red dot on his forehead indicated Franco’s previous skull violation. Betezh looked to be in a foul mood, truly bad tempered.

Behind Franco there came a
click,
a
hiss,
and a hydraulic
whirr.
Franco realised Louis the Razor-droid had been sitting behind him all the time, probably with a gun to his head. Franco strained to see, but couldn’t make the turn. An owl, he was not.

“Well, well, well.”

“Betezh,” said Franco, “you are not an ubër-villain. Only ubër-villains say ‘well, well, well’. What you are is a sad old doctor, balding, plump round the middle from far too many jammy donuts, you never get your little Roger into mischief, and—let’s be totally honest and upfront here—you’ve probably started looking at young boys, like the sad old paedophile fuckwit you are. Now, be a good lad and take off the raze-wire, will you?”

Despite the insults, Betezh smiled. He looked sombre. Franco took this as a bad sign.

“Franco, lad, I’ve got a few simple questions. No threats, this time. Just give me some simple answers.”

“OK,” nodded Franco, warily, wondering when the pain would begin. He had played this sort of game before, manytimes.

“How much do you remember?”

“Well, I did have fourteen pints of Guinness,” began Franco but Betezh waved him into silence.

“No. Let’s regress. Do you recall your entry to Mount Pleasant?”

“No. You pumped me full of toxic shit, don’t
you
remember?”

“Ahh. So you don’t remember...” He glanced at the GE, and seemed to consider his next words with utmost care. “You don’t remember receiving any... visitors?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Except for that woman.”

Betezh sighed. “Go on. Describe her.”

“Small, athletic, well-dressed, nice tits.”

“Is that all?”

Franco tilted his head. Memories were hazy.

“Other than nice tits?” He thought hard. “She had green lips,” he said at last, “and I remember having seen her before, on TV. Some kind of politician, I think. Scumbags the lot of ’em. Only interested in lining their own personal bank vaults.”

“So you
do
remember.” Betezh seemed concerned. “Shit.”

“Yeah. I dreamt about her, a lot. Had some really good dreams about her, God, what a screamer she was, clawing me like an animal... Then she had me perform a series of missions; after all I was in a Combat Squad, I was Combat K and I was the best, yeah? She had me do all sorts of stuff, infiltration, assassination, bomb-planting; shit, they were good dreams, the best, mate. I forgot about those. They used to get me through the long nights at Mount Pleasant; those fantasies stopped me from going—aha—insane.”

Franco glanced up, but Betezh wasn’t looking at him, he was gazing out between the slitted curtains. He sighed, a deep sigh, shaking his bullet head.

Betezh looked down at Franco. There were tears in his eyes.

“And you don’t remember us, do you?”

Franco frowned. “Well, quite frankly I’m flattered, but I don’t remember you leaving flowers or chocs, if that’s what you mean. And I certainly don’t remember any incident of rearward entry, and if you’re going to try and tell me we are long lost gay lovers then I need to inform you I’ve had a severe case of piles and it must have been quite an unpleasant experience.” Franco beamed, in a nasty kind of way. His eyes were gleaming. He could sense fast-approaching danger
.

“
You never stop joking, do you?”

“It’s what keeps me sane, dickhead.”

“I trained with you, Franco. We were mates.”

Franco frowned. “No, I...”

Fog clouded his past. He swallowed, and realised his throat was dry.

“I’ve tried hard to keep you alive. God knows, I tried, with the drugs, and the treatment. They were supposed to work. But you remember; you remember too much.”

He nodded past Franco. The Razor-droid pressed a gun to the back of Franco’s head.

Franco’s eyes met Betezh’s; and he was shocked, truly shocked, to see compassion there: hurt, pain. A memory sliced Franco’s brain with scalpel precision: a pub, a million miles away and a billion light-years ago. Laughing, drinking, lounging over a high bar of waxed wood after a... mountain climb, that’s right, a rescue mission against the side of a mammoth hulking squat mountain of death; then, drunk, glancing right at the pretty girls, gee they’re looking real fine in their tight blouses and short skirts with legs all the way up to their bottoms then back; left, to the two men, two men in the Combat K squad and they were heroes: heroes to the local people heroes to all the local girls, and one of them had a bullet shaved head and shark eyes, and he slapped Franco on the back and roared with laughter and it was Betezh...

“No,” whispered Franco. His head tilted.

Strangeness injected his veins.

“Goodbye,” said Betezh, and gave a single, curt nod.

It was a good dream, the best dream, the sort of dream you wish was never over, and the sort of dream far more real than real could ever be: too perfect. A white sand beach rolled away for eternity. A turquoise ocean lapped tentatively and deposited pink shells like gifts offered from a submissive God. Palm fronds tickled the edge of the beach, and the place was untouched; perfect, intimate, a holy place. Pippa ran towards him wearing just shorts and a white T-shirt. Her long tanned legs shone, her face was a picture of happiness, her shoulder-length black hair was tied back with twine woven from tree bark and she...

She sparkled
.

“
Kee!” she was shouting, “I found some, look, I found some!” In her hands she carried a collage of small fruits—rare through the Quad-Gal—known as Rainbow Fresh. She collapsed in the sand, giggling, and Keenan gazed into her face, and it was that moment, there, then, that click that connection when he fell endlessly in love with her; or realised that he was in love with her... finally allowed his feelings to force their way through the mesh of guilt, and angst, and denial. He stared at her radiance; stared at her purity. And wondered why he hadn’t allowed himself to fall for her before.

The answer was clear; as obvious as sin.

His wife... his daughters... but they were a long way gone, billions of miles across emptiness and spiral trails of frozen hydrogen; and yet, it was deeper, despite the physical distance. Freya had become cold since the birth of their daughters, cold and strange, almost alien to him. A different woman; a different person to the one he had met... and fallen in love with. Had it been merely age? A progression of years? A diversifying of personalities as time passed? Or had it been more? Some other, more subtle (or maybe obvious, only Keenan was too damned blind to see it) trait that hid away from him deep down in a dark place, punishing him with his own stupidity? Whatever the reason, he and Freya had grown apart, far apart, and by mutual consent. They no longer shared a bed. It was a cold bed since the birth of the girls, no longer shared intimacy, and no longer acted effectively as man and wife... even lovers...
Yeah and that makes it all right does it fucker? Find some new meat new skirt, new pussy and watch the dribble roll down your fucking chin. Yeah, just like a sniffer dog with a foot long erection poking from your stained pants as you go on the hunt for fresh fuck flesh...

But... Freya had her own new love interest: discreet, distant, occasional. But there, all the same. Like a family shame: hidden. Hidden, but known
.
That had been a hard pill to swallow, that knowledge, that information. He had kept it quiet; kept it to himself; for the sake of his family, for the sake of the girls.