War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (46 page)

The fighting started when Franco had been working the mines for a year. He had heard rumours of underground bare-knuckle matches where huge sums of money could be won. Franco, however, did not consider himself a fighting man; he knew that he was stocky, powerful and fast, but he had never trained, never worked at pugilism, never really had a fight, except for one or two incidents in his teenage years when he had decimated his challengers. No, Franco kept his head down, his eyes on his pint, and resolutely out of trouble. This was because a) Franco believed that there were reasons to fight, and reasons not to fight. If somebody threatened his mom, then smack
,
down they would go, but a spilled beer? Here mate, let me get you another pint. But there was also b) and b) frightened Franco a lot more than a) ever could. It was something inside his head: a knowledge, an understanding, a self-confessed fearthat once he started... he would not—could not—stop. If fury took him in its fists he was capable of so much more than knocking a man to the ground. And this latent power frightened a young Franco worse than any simple name-calling in the playground or pub. When Franco went out, he went all the way.

One day Franco was working the quarry when he accidentally drove a digger over Korda’s stranded lunchbox. Now, Korda was a giant of a man, a man-mountain,a titan with a reputation for heavy-handedness, a powerful right-hook and a love of beating women. Franco did not like Korda, but Korda had never noticed Franco. Franco did not enter Korda’s sphere of proposed violence; to Korda, Franco was simply a ginger midget with a comedy beard.

With the digger’s engine still running, Franco jumped down from the cab and stood looking at the crushed blue plastic lunchbox, which had once borne the faded picture of a Nuke Train. Franco looked up, looked around to see if he’d been spotted, and turned into a right straight that sent him staggering backwards with a split lip to sit down in the dust. Within seconds, a crowd of men had sprinted to the scene and formed a circle with Franco and Korda at the hub. Franco had blinked away his shock and tested his nose, which he realised was broken. Anger radiated through him. However, powerfully, he calmed the savage beast.

“You crushed my box!” bellowed Korda, his brutal flat face filled with naked aggression and a look that said he would willingly kill any man for even touching his shitty little lunchbox, never mind crushing it into a platter of plastic shards.

Slowly, Franco climbed to his feet.

Korda rolled up his sleeves.

“You shouldn’t have left it there,” said Franco, retaining his calm.

“My lunchbox!” screamed Korda.

“I’m not disputing ownership,” said Franco gently, “I’m just saying it was a mighty dumb place to leave it. This is where all the diggers pass through. To leave it on the floor here was... well, dumb.”

“So you calling me dumb?” intoned Korda, who was not the brightest bulb in the pack.

“We-
eeell
, yes,” said Franco, still tenderly dabbing at his battered nose.

“Bastard whore piss pot!” screamed Korda, and charged.

Franco swiftly side-stepped, and Korda lunged, missing. He whirled, boots kicking up dust.

“Put fists up and fight!”

“I really don’t think this is the place to fight,” said Franco, glancing nervously about. “After all, we’re at work, right? And if the bosses see us...” But then he noticed the bosses were present, even the rotund and short-haired CB, normally so reserved and severe, but now with a coloured flush to her cheeks which spoke of something they all thought impossible in the sterile stern old goat: excitement.

Korda slammed a right hook; it took Franco in the side of the head and sent him hard to ground. He lay there for a while, coughing on the dust, and smiled to himself. OK, he thought. It’s going to be like that, is it? Going to fight dirty, are you? But again, he calmed the flutter of savage rage in his chest and lay there, allowing Korda to have his moment of glory.

Let it go, he thought.

Let it be.

The steel-capped boot connected with Franco’s ribs and lifted him from the ground, rolling him over in the dust with stars flashing pain through his ribcage. He’d felt two crack. The pain was incredible.

He opened his eyes to see Korda looming over him. The giant of a man hefted a titanic black rock above his head. He was grinning, a light of insanity flashing motes in his eyes... a triumph that spoke the pitiful language of the bully, not just of beating a man, but the worst trait of all true cowards: kicking a man when he’s down.

Inside Franco, for the first time in his life, something went
click.
A tiny door opened. Black light flooded his soul. And, as death stared down at him from a stupid flat face with the lop-side of the inbreed, Franco allowed everything—everything—to flood away. He reached out with a rangy powerful hand and slammed a devastating blow to Korda’s kneecap. There was a
crack.
Korda howled, and dropped his rock, which landed on his other foot. Korda reeled back staggering on two injured limbs, as Franco reverently climbed to his feet, dusted himself down, and strode towards the big hopping man.

Korda saw the approach, and put up his fists. He attacked, throwing several jabs, a powerful straight then an uppercut. Franco dodged them all, ribs grinding, and slammed such a powerful blow to Korda’s face that the man’s cheekbone cracked, splintered and disintegrated within the skin sack of his head. Korda went down on one knee. Blood rolled from his nose and left ear. Franco smashed another punch to his head, and Korda rocked; a third hammer-blow sent Korda to the dust... and to his coffin.

Nobody messed with Franco after that. Of course, word went around, and other men of fighting calibre would come to challenge Franco: reigning champions of the Reinhart and Seckberg site. Huge sums of money ran on these fights, usually conducted underground in abandoned mines or deep quarry chambers, in blast holes or beside underground lakes. Franco won every fight. No quarter was given. Whatever thread had snapped inside his soul during that first bout... well, it unleashed a demon.

It was on the 31st October—Halloween—that Franco’s mother first fell ill. The diagnosis was swift, the medical prognosis brutal: cancer of the stomach. She had six months—at best—to live.

Franco stood on the hilltop by Rannok Tower under the dark and acid sleet, a bottle of vodka in one hand, a cylinder of OptionX in the other. It had been his intention to kill himself that night: to scream at the world, to defy the world, and God, and everything; to vent his misery and fury in the only way he could see and understand, with violence and death and annihilation. But a small voice spoke to him; it said
you’re being a retard, Franco Haggis, and yes your mother is going to die and we all die and what the hell are you doing drinking and revelling in self-pity? Do you think it will help your mother to bury her only son, to go to her grave knowing that you did something so fucking foolish? Not to benefit her, oh no, but to benefit your own selfish little bout of pitiful squirming self-pity? Put down the explosive. Go home. And look after your mother as best you can... make her final days peaceful and filled with love. Be a good son. You’ll only get this one chance. You have a gift. Seize it. Give love.

Nodding to himself, Franco stumbled from Rannok Tower, down the stone pathway and through pools of mud. He returned home and started as he meant to go on, with an out-pouring of love and caring.

The next day, Franco followed his usual routine. Get up, brush teeth, full hearty breakfast of sausage and bacon, walk to work through the town just before dawn, and clock in at Reinhart & Seckberg Quarries Ltd. He placed his jacket delicately in his locker and then put his lunchbox on the shelf. However, instead of heading for his Section—as he had every day for the past eight years—he headed for the Office, and more precisely, for CB’s Office. CB controlled all operations at Reinhart and Seckberg Quarries Ltd. It was to CB he needed to speak.

He knocked. There was a long pause that CB used intentionally to make people feel uncomfortable. “Come in.” Her voice was gravel: lips on cock, throat filled with raze-wire.

She did not look up. Meekly, Franco seated himself in a rigid plastic chair before her desk, which was overflowing with important looking paperwork and digital dockets. CB continued to tap into her computer, then scrolled using a 3D Airmouse, which glittered like a tiny sun about a foot above her desk. Finally, her cold blue eyes turned on Franco, and he took in the full open horror of this... woman
.

“
Yes?” The voice was a cold snap of wind on a winter’s morn.

Franco smiled. “Hello. I’ve worked here for eight years...” he began.

“Yes. I know how long you’ve worked here Mr. Haggis. Get to the point.”

Franco felt a little tug at the corner of his eye. His smile fell from his face like a virgin’s dress on her wedding night.

“I have worked here for eight years. Not once have I asked for anything, but recently I had some bad news regarding my mother. She’s been diagnosed as having stomach cancer, and I was wondering if I could possibly reduce my workload? Just a little? Cut some of my hours?”

CB had been looking down at paperwork on her desk as Franco spoke. But now she glanced up swiftly, her lips a line of poisoned coke, bloodless and white.

“I empathise with your predicament, Mr. Haggis,” she said, without managing to show it, “but as you know it is company policy to allow no reduction in hours. I believe it would be bad for Workflow. Bad for the Department, you understand.”

“But I...” said Franco, tilting his head. CB held up a finger, as if to chastise a naughty schoolchild.

“The situation is this. Reinhart and Seckberg has a huge series of orders coming in over the next four months. I cannot, cannot, allow any of the workforce the slightest reduction in hours. After all, if I gave you one day a week, how could I possibly replace one day a week? Who would want to work one day a week?”

“But it’s my mother,” said Franco, “she’s dying.”

“I appreciate that must be very difficult for you,” said CB. She stared at him with glass eyes. She was a machine, a replicant, a deviant. Franco felt a winter ice-storm flow over his soul, and he shivered, despite the ersatz warmth in CB’s Office. “However, the answer is still no.”

“So that’s it. No, just like that?”

“Is there anything else Mr. Haggis? Of course, if you don’t like my decision you could always resign.” She smiled a frosty smile. “Although you’ll find your contract binds you to a six month resignation clause. In breach, this is punishable by imprisonment as per local by-laws.” She smiled again. “Was there anything else? No? Well close the door on your way out, there’s a good lad.” She returned to her keyboard. He had been dismissed.

Franco bristled. Anger bubbled inside him. It was a carefully controlled furnace. He tried once more.

“If you could just see it in your heart to allow me even a few hours a week? If you want, once my mother has—passed away
—
I can make up any hours you might kindly allow. I will work them back tenfold; I swear it. I just need this time for my family, but I need it now.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Haggis,” was the cold verbal ejaculation. CB did not even look up.

Dejected, destroyed, decimated, Franco climbed wearily to his feet and shuffled from the office. He went to his work and spent the day in a morbid mental chasm; darkness settled over him like rat plague.

For the next three weeks, Franco plodded methodically to work, carried out his job, returned home, and cared for his mother. Her love and gratitude were bright cheerful things: candle flames; but it was hard work, and many nights Franco got only three hours sleep. Exhaustion became his best friend, despair his lover.

Then, returning home from work on a Wednesday evening, he found his mother dead. Her body was shrivelled and cold, skeletal in the hold of the cancer, which had so viciously swept through her like a black gnawing tidal wave.

Franco sat all night and cried, holding her rigid hand.

Then he realised: he had not only been cheated of those last moments of life with the one he loved the most, but his own lack of strength had perpetuated her misery. She had died alone. And nobody should have to die alone.

Franco finally stood, stretching his powerful frame.

Outside, dawn light filtered through the window, and he realised he was late for work, for the first time in his life. The kube buzzed and Franco’s head snapped left.

“Yes?” he said into the mouthpiece.

“This is CB at Reinhart and Seckberg Quarries Ltd. It would appear you are late for work, Mr. Haggis.”

“My mother has just died,” said Franco, a black hole collapsing his heart. “Give me an hour.”

“If you are more than an hour I am sorry to say you will be an ex-employee, Mr. Haggis. And we all know how many people are out of work in this town
.
With regard to your wages: they will, of course, be docked.”

“Of course, CB,” said Franco.

The kube buzzed again and died.

Franco looked up. His eyes were full of tears, but he did not allow them to fall. A terrible rage slammed through him like an axe blade. He licked his lips slowly, stooped and closed his mother’s eyes, kissed her cold dead lips, and then strode to the door. He took his jacket. He looked back at the room—the house—which seemed suddenly so small; it had shrunk with the passing of She who filled it with warmth, with life.