War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (34 page)

Keenan stood and moved to him. Keenan took the water bottle from the boy, and took a small sip.

Klik stared at him defiantly.

“This is liquor,” said Keenan, “like vodka, but not quite. Boy, have you been drinking all this time?”

“It makes a warrior strong!” snapped the youth.

“It makes a warrior pissed,” said Franco.

“This is our way. We feast on the spirit of our enemies.”

“What, you ferment their corpses?”

“Different cultures different customs,” said Keenan. Then he turned back to Klik, who was swaying. “Where did you get this?” Keenan had to admit he was annoyed, but forced himself to remain calm. This boy was supposed to be their guide, confirming their route and double-checking maps. If he was drunk, or even worse, an alcoholic, then he would be more hindrance than use. Keenan should know; his mother had been an alcoholic, and as a child he had witnessed her gradual deterioration until she finally drank two bottles of whisky and threw herself down the stairs, cracking her head like a melon from the bottom of the balustrade.

Klik shrugged. “The stores back on the Gem Rig. Mr. Keenan, when you see so many of your friends die, you need a little something to keep you going. It brings great reserves of strength; it fortifies the blood; it makes a Ket-i warrior powerful.”

With a hiss, Keenan tossed the bottle into the lake. It sank without trace.

Klik’s eyes widened. “No!” he breathed, lips wet and glistening, face contorting in horror. “Mr. Keenan, what have you done?”

“Help you overcome your addiction, lad.”

Klik ran to the edge of the poisonous soup and, for a terrible moment, Keenan thought the boy was going to leap in after the bottle. Instead he turned, his whole body shaking with... rage.

Despite the boy’s youth, Keenan was suddenly glad of his MPK and Techrim pistol. He eyed the huge hunting knife at the boy’s belt; its blade was serrated, black, more a machete than a knife. Klik had blessed the blade, said it was the weapon that would slay the enemies of his dead family.

Klik let out a howl, a screeching wail that cut through the mist, and then he was gone, stampeding through the group and disappearing into the swirling white. His footsteps, slapping on bone, quickly faded. A terrible silence seemed to close in, oppressive and claustrophobic.

“Shit,” said Keenan.

“Well done,” said Pippa, “ever the genius at child psychology.”

“What would you have me do? Allow the kid to get slowly massacred, then lead us straight into an eel-lake?”

“No, but the lad’s young and traumatised. He’s seen so many of his friends killed. Is it any surprise he’s turned to drink? After all, we’re not so damned perfect; it’s the first thing wedo when we have a bad day at work, and we’resupposed to be adults.”

“Anybody for coffee?” said Franco, holding up the pan of boiling water.

The mist swirled around their hiatus in conversation.

Then a noise cut through the white. It was a howl, high-pitched, keen, reverberating. It held the high note for maybe a minute, wavering and fixed, then died into a lullaby of silence.

Combat K stood frozen: statues, a tableaux.

“Was that Klik?” said Franco softly. The pan in his hand wavered.

Keenan gave a quick shake of his head, bringing his MPK round and making sure the weapon was ready to go. “Wrong direction.” His words were clipped, economical.

“The mist can play games with sound,” said Pippa, voice barely above a whisper.

Then they came: ghosts running in crouches, sprinting from the mist like a flood. One warrior, huge and frightening in visual ferocity, leapt at Keenan whose MPK screamed in hairline trigger-instinct, bullets raking the sky, the mist, as the alien crashed into him bearing him violently to the ground with one knee in Keenan’s throat, the other in his chest. Keenan slammed against the hard bone-rock with a grunt of surprise, MPK gun useless and body shocked into a stunned incapability by the sheer blurred speed of the attack... and throat dry with instant fear. He fought back with a snarl hammering a right hook into the alien’s jaw but the blow barely rocked the figure and a bone dagger rose above Keenan’s eyes. Its tip was stained with enemy blood. The warrior’s face loomed above him like a monster, contorted in a killing frenzy. Light sparkled from emerald shards woven in the warrior’s eyelids making pools of green flood his face. Keenan scrabbled in desperation for his Techrim but he knew time was his enemy a brutal enemy. Pressure on chest and throat crushed him and he could not draw and fire before the dagger plunged into his eye and into his sweet soft brain beyond. He cursed his loose attitude and weakness and his unreadiness and it was gone and done in an instant as the dagger slammed towards his face and in reflex his eyes snapped shut...

Chapter 11

The City of Bone

Keenan was a little boy again. He lived in a small house on a small street in a small town. The house had two bedrooms, no garden, and a sloping stone-paved back yard. His mother grew roses in pots, huge towering bushes with severe thorns and bright heavy-scented blooms of red and pink. In the summer bees came and buzzed around the flowers, and once Keenan—only eight-years-old—had been stung by a big fat bee. With tears leaving trails down his face he had run across the flags, sandals flapping, up the steep stone steps and into the kitchen. He skidded left, nostrils twitching on a strange, strange smell and then... stopped dead. His mother lay, at the bottom of the stairs, head to the ground and twisted to one side, legs still trailing up onto the lower stairs. One arm was caught beneath her, one arm tossed carelessly above her head. Her eyes were open and staring as Keenan moved close. “Mom,” he said, his bee-sting forgotten, “Mom!” and the smell came to him from that black bottomless open stinking maw, the smell that always lingered on her breath and meant she would be bad to him because of the bad things he did, and more and more often the bad things had got worse, and her punishments were more violent as bruises blossomed like black and purple flowers up and down his legs, across his back and shoulders and backside. He crouched by her and looked into dead eyes. Something went
click
inside his soul as understanding flooded him, and he reached out and slowly prodded the corpse. Only then did he see the blood. A pool slowly expanded beneath her head on the wooden floor from a ten-inch crack in her skull. The blood was a deep rich crimson; a little like the full-scented blooms that grew in the back yard. Keenan dipped his finger into her blood and sniffed at it, then wiped it on his shorts.

They found him two days later in a serious state of dehydration. The Urban Force kicked down the door after being alerted by neighbours, and a female officer called Ekaterina tenderly picked the little boy up, although he flinched at her touch as if she might strike him. She held him tight, her own pain melting in light of three miscarriages and a narrow walk across a tightrope, on one side of which lay the blade of a razor and oblivion; on the other, a vibrant beauty of new life.

It took three months to clear the arse-ache bureaucracy of adoption paperwork. And as summer drew to a close Keenan found himself sitting on a park bench with two strange fat women who smelled of sweat and kept shoving packets of boiled sweets under his nose. He pushed them away. Ekaterina came, like a dream, walking down the gravel path. She was dressed in civilian clothes, a short green flared skirt, a cream blouse, knee-high brown boots, and the sun shone against her radiant skin making her glow. She smiled when she saw him, crouched down and held out her arms. He tugged free of the restrictive fat women, symbols of a bureaucracy aimed not at simplifying the adoption process, but of turning it into a nightmare of paperwork and pointless obstacles. He ran to her; fell into her arms, pushed his face into her hair and smelled her femininity underlined by a distant essence of coconut. He cried and her hair absorbed his tears. “There, my little love,” she was saying. “Everything’s all right now, everything will be just fine. I’ll look after you. You’re mine now. Nobody will ever hurt you again.”

Keenan blinked as the dagger slammed towards his face. His mouth opened as a tiny sound escaped an “O” of disappointment that his life should end like this and he blinked as the snarling teeth-bared face above imploded with a
crump
as the bullet ate into his head and exploded in a mushroom of bone shards and blood mist. Lumps of burnt flesh exploded outwards. Keenan twisted as the corpse began its sideways topple and Pippa, Makarov levelled, transferred her gaze as if in slow motion as the second figure crashed into her and she went hammering backwards and down. Keenan pushed the corpse from him, surging to his knees; the next warrior was on him. The bone dagger slashed at his face, but he took the blow against his arm, crashing his fist into the attacker’s nose, a devastating blow that spread his attacker’s flesh. Slivers of diamond embedded in Keenan’s knuckles and he ducked a return slash, ramming a low punch into the warrior’s groin and drawing his Techrim smoothly. The man stepped back, grinned a snarl, and Keenan shot him in the face. Features disintegrated with an implosion of gristle and exit of bone.

“Keenan!” Pippa’s voice was panicked. Keenan leapt to avoid a burst of machine gun fire, his face dropping into a cool dark scowl of controlled anger and low-level hatred. He landed on his shoulder, rolled, came up firing. The Techrim barked in his hand, bullets past the boulders of bone and skimming a heavy-set warrior with yellow eyes. The Ket-i warrior’s Laz-Spear came up and a burst of unseen energy crackled across the clearing. Keenan was already diving, hitting the hard bone ground with a grunt that stripped skin from the palms of his hands; from his prone position he aimed the Techrim. The first 11mm bullet entered the warrior’s throat, destroying his voice box; the second smashed his clavicle and exited on a spray of shards like tiny raining teeth. The third found its mark between the Ket-i’s eyes and he folded in half, deflating, as Pippa pushed him aside with a snarl and grabbed the Laz-Spear.

Keenan found his feet and whirled to see Franco engaged in a savage bout of fist-fighting. The Ket-i warrior was backing away as Franco delivered blistering combinations of left and right straights, left hooks and right uppercuts. The warrior’s face was blistered, and Keenan realised Franco had used the pan of boiling water as a weapon. Keenan’s Techrim tracked the alien Ket-i warrior, and slowly, with measured grace, he pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed the warrior’s skull, and his legs folded neatly beneath him; with a grunt of vomiting blood he mated with the bone-rock ground. Franco frowned, then whirled to Keenan...

Who held up one finger,
wait
. He glanced back at Pippa. She was on her knees, her Makarov in both hands, head scanning from left to right. The mist swirled, thicker now. Silence flooded the clearing; a muffled silence after the sudden brutal onslaught.

Four down, thought Keenan. But... where had they come from? And more importantly, how many were left? He loaded a fresh mag in his Techrim, clicks echoing through mist like a crackle of discharge. Then another enemy, moving fast, Laz-Spear levelled and the
hiss
blasted heat across the clearing. It picked Pippa up, hurling her across the platform and against the rocks where she slammed like a rag-doll, limbs contorted and angular, and hit the ground hard, face down. Keenan’s pistol was
cracking
as he tracked the warrior but he was there, a ghost from the mist, above Pippa’s limp form holding a long black blade to her throat.

“I kill her.”

The words were slurred but understandable, and Keenan froze, Techrim still locked on the warrior. I can take him, he thought. He flowed with the moment.

“No,” said Franco, voice hushed.

Keenan lifted his gun, palms open: submission. “OK.”

He turned to the right as the mist parted, and a mammoth titan of a man—alien, Keenan corrected himself—emerged. He was heavily muscled and garbed for war. He stopped before Keenan, a good two heads taller, a scowl on his terrifyingly pierced and scarred face.

“I am JuJu. You have invaded our world.”

“We are not your enemy,” said Keenan, eyes locked, Techrim a hot prick-tease in his hand.

“All are enemy. You must fight. You, and I, for supremacy here in this place; for your life.”

Peripherally, Keenan saw Franco with two of the Ket-i; they held blades to his throat, and in deference to Pippa, to stop her having her throat slit, Franco had put up bloodied fists.

“Drop your weapons. Or we cut the woman’s throat out.”

Slowly, Keenan peeled free the MPK and it clattered on the bone platform. He tossed aside his Techrim and eyed the huge warrior warily. Hardly a fair fight, he thought, staring at the massive physical supremacy that greeted him. He grinned sourly. But then, who said life was going to be fair? Bitch
.

Four left, then. This was the leader; the four dead had been the scout party, or “testers”? To see what Combat K were capable of? Keenan growled. Well, he thought: fuck you; I’ll show you what I can do.

JuJu was bristling, a powerhouse of meat. He stripped free his weapons and grinning down at Keenan, advanced. Keenan stepped forward, and JuJu attacked, faster than anyone so large had a right to move.

Fists lashed out, left and right and Keenan just managed to dodge. With growing horror he realised the Ket-i warrior was armed; JuJu had short blades bone-welded to his forearms, and tiny slivers of sharpened gems attached to each finger like glittering razor nails.