War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (35 page)

Keenan backed away, fists up. “Nice to see a fair fight,” he snapped. “Pretty little jewellery.”

“I will slice you open like fish,” said JuJu. He no longer grinned. For the Ket, war was a serious business.

He leapt, and Keenan feinted left, then caught the warrior with a crashing right hook that powered the Ket-i down on one knee. Keenan slammed another right hook, then crashed his left knee to the warrior’s jaw. Gem-blades flashed, and with tiny
cracks
,JuJu’s forearm blades sprang forward past fists and slashed at Keenan’s head.

Keenan laughed a short bitter bark. “So, fucker, no playing fair with you, is there?”

JuJu said nothing, swaying.

“Hurt you, didn’t I, maggot?”

JuJu stood. Blood trickled from one corner of his mouth and his nose. He attacked again, a blur, blades slashing the air, Keenan stumbling back to avoid the onslaught. Reaching Franco’s hissing burner, he scooped the small item up and launched it but JuJu clattered the jet aside to rattle across the bone ground and roll at Franco’s feet, blue flames jetting like tiny spears. Keenan ran at the Ket-i warrior, eyes focused and the blades flashed up to meet him as Franco, eyes gleaming, tapped the burner with his sandal. The hissing jet rolled into the creamy pool and suddenly there was a
whoosh
as a sheet of fire erupted across the gaseous marsh and billowed out across the platform, scorching hair and flesh as it screamed. JuJu, distracted, caught the full force of a barrage of blows from Keenan which ended with a double-booted hammer to the face. The great Ket-i warrior hit the ground and Keenan was on him, one boot beneath the warrior’s arm, the other coming down with a
crack
that snapped the bone-welded blade from JuJu’s forearm. The warrior screamed, a bloodcurdling sound, as Keenan rammed another fist into his face, breaking a tooth; then he stomped on the second bone-welded jewelled blade. This, too, snapped with a geyser of blood from torn forearm flesh which showered Keenan. Keenan snatched one blade, head snapping right to where Pippa—in the shockwave of erupting fire—had ducked and rammed her elbow back into the Ket-i’s throat with the force of an assassin; which she was. The warrior staggered, and Keenan launched the severed jewel blade across the clearing with a
hiss
of rushing air. It slammed the warrior’s eye socket and dropped him without a sound. Blood poured out and turned the bone-rock red. Franco was struggling with his two warriors, and Keenan grabbed the second severed forearm blade and pressed it into JuJu’s throat, hard. Blood welled against the razor tip.

“Call them off, fucker.”

“Kazxai!” shouted JuJu. Instantly, the two warriors backed away from Franco, who deflated a little, his face and upper torso battered and covered in blood and bruising.

“Pippa, a gun.”

Pippa handed Keenan his Techrim, and two cracks echoed across the bone platform. The Ket-i warriors reeled back, both with bullets in their skulls. One lay still, leg twitching, the other rolled and fell into the marsh where the flames had died to nothing more than an amber murmur. The body sank, and there was a sudden frenzy of activity as huge eels, their black glistening coils rising above the surface, fed. Bubbles rolled across the marsh waters. One arm lifted from the depths, stripped to the bone with only a few twitching tendons still attached to flexing fingers, but then the feeding was done and the arm sank, and the soup returned through ripples to a gentle stillness.

Keenan looked back, down at JuJu.

“You are a man of war,” said the Ket-i around bubbles of blood. Keenan nodded, eyes hard.

“You prefer to die with gun or blade?” Keenan said.

“Blade,” said JuJu, eyes fixed on Keenan’s. “I expect no less.”

Keenan nodded, and tensed. And realised JuJu was laughing.

“This a comedy moment for you, son?”

“I am just imagining, in this the moment of my death, your face when you reach the Fractured Emerald.”

Keenan glanced at Pippa, then Franco. Franco shrugged, and dabbed at his battered lips.

“Tell me what you know?”

“They know your mission, those in the Metal Palace.”

“And you are?”

“I am JuJu, one of the Princes of KellKet. I volunteered to hunt you down. Even men such as you will find it difficult to reach the Fractured Emerald. You will never penetrate the defences of the Metal Palace.” His voice dropped, eyes glittering. “This is not your world, human. You must leave here. You must go home. Only death awaits you, death and something... more.”

“I seek... information,” said Keenan, “that is all. There is something I need to know; and the Fractured Emerald will find answers for me.”

“Only if she chooses to Commune. She must give freely, Keenan. Did Prince Akeez not explain to you?”

“Prince...” Keenan grinned, relaxing back on his heels. He gestured to JuJu to stand, and in defeat the huge warrior climbed wearily to his feet. His shoulders sagged and he bore his betterment like a cloak. Blood pumped from his torn arms and pattered to the bone-rock. “Tell me what you know of Prince Akeez.”

“Only that you are betrayed, Keenan. Akeez is an evil man. His dream is greater than you could ever imagine.”

“Convenient. Maybe you’re bluffing?”

JuJu shrugged.

Franco jogged over. “Are we killing him, Keenan? I’ll be honest, this place gives me the creeps. And now it’s filled with bodies, I’d like to move on; find somewhere to make a fresh pan of coffee.”

“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?”