War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (43 page)

Klik hated the darkness, despised the cold. Having spent most of his childhood in the jungles and The Bone City, amongst fallen heat-dried trees, wind-blown sand and bone houses, and mostly outside in the daylight, the place in which he found himself was a horror he could not fully absorb, could not truly comprehend. During Klik’s formative years he had spent the short night hours of Ket indoors by the fire, watching the flames and revelling in their dance, enjoying the heat, talking with the demons therein and allowing the dancers to soothe him. Now, in this underground vault, the coldness had quickly penetrated through his scant clothing, and he felt as if it was eating his bones, eating his soul.

The infiltration had been surprisingly easy; a few local charms stolen from small children, and Klik soon reinvented himself as a member of the tribe that had once spat him free and banished him to a future filled with no hope, only a promise of oblivion. Klik, however, had insider knowledge on how tribes operated: customs and styles, subtle speech patterns and hand gestures, and so was prepared—physically and mentally—for the challenge ahead.

However, the further he progressed with his plan—the more he was successful, victorious!—so the more his confidence wavered, the more his surety was eroded by the acid stench of fear... not fear of death, but a desolate horror at the possibility he would not accomplish his task before death embraced him.

The cold, the darkness, the feeling of being entombed beneath the ground was also affecting him mentally. He continually shivered, shudders flowing like a wayward tide through his flesh and left him drained, weak, deeply sick to his stomach. But still he forced himself on, deeper and deeper, and finally into a vast dark cavern, the black arena he had overheard from slack-jawed guards on patrol as he hung like a monkey from overhead pipe-work. Something big and dangerous was going down, and instinctively Klik knew it involved JuJu.

Ahhh, JuJu, the warrior who had killed his father. Klik had been only seven at the time, watching in fascinated horror as JuJu descended with his Royal Honour Guard, exchanged a few short words and slammed his Laz-Spear through his father’s unprotected chest. Klik’s father had fallen to his knees, and JuJu had remained, casual, holding the dying, twitching man rigid on the end of the weapon, and, amazingly, still speaking as if discussing the weather, or a recent gem crop. JuJu’s eyes had been wide and unfocused, spiritually empty on the hallucinogenic root of Gatella Cheop.

JuJu finally kicked the dead body from his spear with contempt, ducked and entered the family home, a modest—some would say poor
—
bone house, and stood with hands on hips staring at Klik’s mother. Klik had whimpered, withdrawing to the corner of the room as his mother was ordered to disrobe; in fear, she had removed her silks and bone trinkets, as Klik’s older brother emerged from a side room, screamed, attacked, and was batted easily to the ground like a useless insect. JuJu rammed his spear through Klik’s brother’s head. Klik remembered quite clearly watching for a while as brains and blood seeped from a fractured skull where the Laz-Spear connected him to the floor. The rape had been short and brutal, the knife across Klik’s mother’s throat silencing her fake moans of ecstasy and then...

Then JuJu turned his attentions to Klik, silent in the corner.

The huge warrior, angry now for some reason—maybe at the lack of sport from this weak and socially deprived family—retrieved his
Laz-Spear by standing on Klik’s brother’s head and wrenching the weapon free with a
crunch
. He advanced on the youngest member of the family, who intuitively hunched down, frozen in terror, mouth agape like some injured fish... ultimately, waiting to die.

JuJu stood before Klik, Laz-Spear in his fist, eyes filled with a furious anger.

Klik’s mother, throat slit so that she gaped with two mouths, lunged across the floor, driving her dagger through JuJu’s foot; Klik heard quite clearly the grating of serrated blade slicing flesh, muscle, bone, heard the rainfall pattering of ejecting blood droplets, but did not wait to see JuJu slam his Laz-Spear through the brave woman’s breast, piercing her heart. Instead, he turned, clambered out of the window, and ran with all his might towards eelmarsh... and the sea beyond.

There had been no pursuit.

Klik blinked.

The memories were still brutal, sorrowful; they filled his eyes with tears and his throat with dry pain. It had been a time of great learning, of achieving manhood. The possibility of survival had been remote, but Klik had survived. And now he was back.

He pulled free a fresh bottle of clear liquor—stolen hours earlier—and drank deeply. Alcohol rimed his veins and he welcomed the easy release; yet he knew, deep inside, that he was cheating himself. He lifted the bottle and stared at the clear but potently powerful liquor. He frowned. No, not now, he thought. The drink was wrong
.
It would deprive him of victory, remove his senses when he needed them most.

He stowed away the bottle, his need, his release, and moved on through the darkness. Sharp eyes finally discerned the circle of Ket’s finest warriors, and Klik approached.

He halted behind the throng of armed guards. They were locked, eyes and minds entranced on the events unfurling ahead. With brittle cracks, their War Prophet, the Fractured Emerald, was transmogrifying into something more alien than alien. Klik took little note. All that concerned him was the one large regal Ket-i warrior central to the action: the one who had murdered his family, the one who had stolen his life. Honour dictated Klik’s actions; honour and pride gave him the energy and bravery he desired.

Only death could end this mission... one way or another.

The ranks of warriors, despite appearances, were a poorly structured unit. The Ket-i, whilst none could overlook or dismiss their bravery and ferocity in battle, did not adhere to any form of battle order or rank unity. Their formation was a scattering, and between each man was simply enough room to wield a Laz-Spear. Klik moved through these arteries with care, not wishing to arouse suspicion. Despite his youth, he was tall, and his disguise fitted neatly with the culture. He passed more and more warriors until, up ahead, he heard the skittering of sharp-bladed claws on the bone ground, and at last was close enough to see—

Keenan, backing away to Pippa and Franco who had been seized by guards, their weapons taken. Keenan’s eyes were wide and filled, if not with fear, then a terrible apprehension.

Emerald attacked.

Klik blinked, the movements were so fast. The creature left Keenan reeling, blood on his hands as he tried to hold himself together. Klik licked dry lips; Keenan was not his problem. Klik turned. He saw JuJu. JuJu was entranced by this dance of violence. Klik smiled.
Violence breeds violence,
he thought. He knelt, withdrawing a blade from a Helk-leather sheath against his calf; then, again moving slowly, with easy confidence, he approached JuJu, whose large body was tensed, bathed in sweat.

Klik leapt, arms circling JuJu, and with all his strength he jammed the knife into the man’s throat, feeling the keen-edged metal bite into skin, through windpipe, pushing deeper and deeper with warm blood flowing, flushing over his hands, and it was all a dream a beautiful dream. JuJu thrashed beneath him, but his blades were as nothing, useless and pointless. Klik dragged on the knife with a slight sawing motion, felt tendons pop beneath the blade, felt more blood gush in pumping great waves as he pressed and pulled and sawed, and was finally thrown free by the huge gurgling thrashing warrior.

Klik hit the ground, rolled, came up on his elbows. His knife had fallen into infinity. He stared up as JuJu staggered back, the surrounding Ket-i guards opening like a doorway to give him room. Then JuJu dropped to one knee, eyes fixed on the boy, Klik, hands pressed against the huge flap in his throat, as blood poured from the smiling wound and formed a perfectly round puddle on the bone floor. JuJu tried to stand, staggered again, and this time slipped on his own gore and fell to both knees. He stared at Klik for what seemed like an age; then he slowly reclined back, chest heaving, hands clutching his opened throat.

Klik stared at the guards around him; they looked down, back at JuJu, then back to the boy. They did nothing.

Klik climbed to his feet, found his dagger, and approached JuJu. Nobody stopped him; nobody tried to halt, or intervene, in any way. It was a matter of battle
.
Klik knelt by JuJu’s speechless and fast dying shell.

“You killed my father, my mother, my brother.” Klik’s tears fell, fell into the open wound at JuJu’s throat, but no amount of tears would wash the blood free. “Now you will be their Eternity Slave. I swear this, with my blood, with my honour, and seal it... with death.”

Klik leant forward and continued to work at cutting JuJu’s throat, at the muscles and tendons of his neck. JuJu struggled weakly to push the boy away, but Klik slapped at the hands, knocking the warrior’s blood-slippery grip away from the task that consumed him. He struggled when he came to the spinal column, but his knife was both sharp and serrated, a saw, and he worked methodically, leaned all his body-weight into the task and finally there was a
crack
, and Klik tugged the head from the corpse and staggered to his feet. He lifted JuJu’s head into the air, streaming blood and torn tendons, and flaps of skin. He simply stood there, snarling his defiance at the people, the tribe, who had made him outcast.

Klik waited for the killing blow.

It did not come.

He waited, anger fading gradually like a storm-bleached sunset dying. He dropped JuJu’s head, and the spikes bone-welded to the dead leader’s skull clattered hollowly. He turned, and saw Keenan lying on his back, arms above his head... but Emerald had frozen, one pointed spike lifted as if to smash Keenan’s face from existence. He heard a voice, shouting, “Get the controller, it’s on his wrist, Klik... get the controller!” Then he was falling as if into a soft pastel ocean and the surf roared in his ears, in his mind, and his vision turned to foam. He dived beneath the surface and sank into blue-green depths.

Keenan awoke in agony, chest searing hot laser fire. Before he opened his eyes his hand moved to the wound, and he heard a shushing, soothing noise as one might make to an injured child. He opened his eyes and grinned.

“Thought that had to be you,” he said.

Pippa smiled down, face shadowed by the single bulb hanging in the stark cell.

Cell? Shit.

Keenan, groaning, sat up and glanced around. The cell was indeed a cell, hollowed from what appeared to be a single bone. The walls, floor, ceiling, all had a curious hand-scraped look, as if laboriously chiselled by blunt tools. Franco sat in the corner, knees under his chin, snoring. Pippa offered Keenan a bone cup, and he drank milky water, choking and dribbling it down his chin; then he accepted a longer draught with greedy necessity.

“They catch us, then?”

“Yeah,” said Pippa. “You are one lucky son of a bitch.”

“What happened?”

“Klik killed JuJu; slit his throat. Cut his damned head off, in fact.”

“Can’t say I’ll miss him; stitched us up like a kipper. What happened next?”

“Emerald froze. JuJu had her controller hot wired to his own system; when he died, she no longer received his controlling impulses. So she turned back into... well, into her human form.” Pippa shuddered. “It was horrible. What is she, Keenan?”

“A creature drifting a long way from home.”

Franco woke with a snort. His face carried excessive bruising, and he grimaced, a movement Keenan realised was a grin
.
“You OK there Big Man?” he said. “Thought that Emerald lass was going to whup your ass.”

“Me too,” nodded Keenan. He stretched, and groaned as pain lashed his system. He stood up, paced around the cell. It was small, had thick bars of bone, and no obvious weakness to exploit.

“You told him yet?” said Franco, casting a sly glance at Pippa.

“Told me what?”

“So I see she hasn’t. OK, buddy, it goes like this. Basically, they’ve arrested us for attempting to steal their greatest living artefact; they’ve invited Quad-Gal media—and I mean the Big Boys—over for a feast of high-profile front-page prime-time coverage. Keenan, we’ll be going out on all two million channels. I can just imagine it, ‘Combat K, Wanted in over Five Thousand Systems! Enlivened, Exciting Execution on the ’morrow!’” Franco beamed proudly at his expansive use of jargon media-speak and alliteration.

“Executed?” said Keenan.

“By Laz-Noose,” said Pippa. Her smile was a weak one, “Laser noose, to a layman. The Captain of the Guard was explaining it to us with much relish before you awoke; apparently he fears we have defecated on their religion, attempted a mockery on the Ket-i people’s system of social and political stability. He thought that, if we had been successful, then Ket-i would have entered a state of civil war.”

“The whole damn planet’s been in a state of war for the past ten million fucking years,” snarled Keenan. “The only benefit the Fractured Emerald offers is that of insider information. JuJu’s tribe were waging a war by utilising illegal information on future tactical movements! Jesus! The Ket can stick their fucking execution. We’re going to get out of here.”

Pippa shrugged. “What happens is this: We’ll be given brain-stim injections and then executed by Laz-Noose, all in front of a baying, bloodthirsty, Quad-Gal media-savvy crowd. Apparently, we drop through a trapdoor on a specially built platform, we strangle; then the Laz-Nooseinitiates to cut off our heads. But, because of the injected brain-stim, the decapitated head then stays alive for another 72 hours, allowing successive and extensive torture to continue. Headless, a victim is subjected to a whole host of face and brain mangling. It’s a wonderfully inventive system. Wouldn’t you agree?”