War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (5 page)

“Why’s that?”

“Your family was murdered, was it not? Prior to this, you had sexual relations with a member of your combat squad, a woman named Pippa. Your wife discovered this adultery and you had, shall we say, a violent quarrel, but she died before you were able to speak to her one last time. You are therefore a man torn with guilt and grief; a man who would turn back the clock... if he could?”

Keenan had gone cold. Slowly, he reached back and pulled free the Techrim. He leant forward, placing the weapon on the warped timbers with a solid
clack.
Keenan stared into Prince Akeez’s eyes and composed his words with care before opening his mouth.

“I think, my friend,” his voice was low, and very, very dangerous, “you over-step the mark.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Keenan. I do not wish to offend. Let me explain: I know about Terminus5, I know you were a member of an elite Combat K squad. I know your mission went horribly wrong and your CK was disbanded. You received prison sentences and were prohibited from re-forming your merry group of killers, with a GroupD prohibition. To meet up again means to die. Yes?”

“Go on.”

“After you were sentenced for sending the Terminus5 K Series Shield Reactor critical and putting the whole Terminus5 planet at risk, you—and your comrades—spent eight months in a high security military facility called the Pit. During this time, your wife discovered your infidelity, visited you in prison just prior to your release, and you fought, quite savagely by all accounts; the kind of argument that can never be taken back. Three days later, and a day after your release, both your wife and your little girls were massacred. Police investigation led to a dead end. There were no suspects—except you—nobody arrested or questioned; no clues, no samples, no DJK files, nothing. No terrorist group claimed responsibility. Nobody came forward after reel-to-reel reports on news-side CrimeShows. The case was eventually suspended, which we both know means it was put on an eternal, no-hope hold.”

“I see you have access to my military files,” said Keenan, finishing his cigarette. His face had changed; no longer did it hold any hint of friendship. It had gone hard, like a brittle shell. His eyes shone with a terrible light.

“I can offer you ten million gem-dollars... if you can recover the Fractured Emerald.”

“Prince Akeez, suddenly, I’m not very interested in your money. Now, I’m going to ask you politely, but I’m only going to ask you once. I advise you not to misinterpret my politeness as weakness, nor to assume you are safe here because of your digital Security Device. It was disabled four minutes ago and can be reclaimed in several pieces at a later date.”

At this, Akeez went pale, his eyes dropping to focus on the dark Techrim 11mm. The gun was battered, chipped, dented, scratched. If the gun could speak, it would have told a thousand tales.

“Now,” Keenan stood fluidly, and stubbed the dead remains of his home-rolled cigarette into a pink seashell ashtray. “Leave, and not just my office. I suggest you exit Dekkan Tell. I would suggest this is no longer a safe haven for a man with your, shall we say, inside information.”

Prince Akeez stood. He sat his small black hat on his head, then reached down and placed a metal card on Keenan’s desk. Then he met Keenan’s steel gaze.

“May I say one last thing?”

“Better be good. My patience wears thin.”

“The Fractured Emerald; it is not just an object of lust, of wealth, of power.”

“You have five seconds to leave.” Keenan looked at his watch, and reached for the Techrim.

“It has psychic abilities. It can look into the future, and it can see into the past. With the right guidance, the right encoding, with a return to full power, it could discover the identity of the person who murdered your family.”

Keenan froze. The room seemed to spin into slow-motion. Keenan glanced to the right, where Cam floated just outside the window, a tiny red light blinking on its black casing. Then his head snapped back to Akeez and his lips formed a snarl as the world sprang back to reality and shock slammed Keenan like a hammer-blow.

“Get out. Get the fuck out, now!”

Akeez half-smiled, but his gaze was black. “You have a Dark Flame burning inside you, Mr. Keenan. It will lead you on the Right Path.” Then he was gone. Keenan slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes, rubbing his temples, listening to the distant surge and crash of the sea. Beyond, the city breathed: sounds of traffic, voices in chatter, the clatter of plates in a nearby Dek Restaurant.

Cam glided into the room, spinning.

It hung, waiting patiently, above Keenan’s desk.

Finally, the man’s eyes opened and he stared at the security device. “I can’t believe that man; to invent suchathing in order to gain my services? What a bastard
.
In my younger days I would have shot him in the face and dumped his body in the sea, just out of principle.”

“Keenan, I’ve just had an exchange with Fortune. Fortune checked the data. The Fractured Emerald does exist, and is indeed rumoured to have psychic abilities. According to local Ket-i legend it can see into the future... and into the past
.”

“So he was telling the...”

There came a long, uneasy silence. Cam spun on the spot; a sure sign of agitation in the tiny machine.

Keenan reached forward and picked up the metal card. It had an ident-chip contact. Keenan walked towards the window and looked out over the glittering waves.

“It would, of course, be a highly dangerous mission.”

“But then, you are a highly dangerous man,” said Cam.

“I could not do it alone.”

“You could always assemble a small team; you know some nasty cases, I am sure.”

“I would need the best.”

There came a long pause. Several tiny lights glittered across Cam’s black shell. “I think what you’re implying would be a terrible idea; nigh on impossible...”

“Why?”

“Since you last had communication, Franco has been locked in a mental institution and is pumped full of narcotics; whilst Pippa has been charged with eight counts of murder and segregated to a terminal security facility on Five Grey Moons. If she tries to escape she is instantly exterminated by implanted logic-cubes in her skull.”

“Still, I would need their help. If Pippa doesn’t kill me on sight...”

“She did threaten that, yes. I believe she said she would cut out your heart with her bare fingers. Then burn your corpse. Now, my large and violent friend, do you truly want my advice?”

Keenan turned, fixing his gaze on the Security PopBot. He gave a curt nod and waited, head to one side, unreadable look fixed to his mask.

“Let Akeez go. Stay here, run your little PI business and accept that sometimes in life justice is not achieved. Murders do go unsolved. Evil is not always punished. The weak are not always protected by the strong. Sometimes, Keenan, life is a bitch, and there’s just nothing you can do about it.”

“OK.” He turned, stared out to sea. Waves rolled over the shore, crested with a bubbling of foam.

“But you’re going to ignore my advice, aren’t you? You’re going to head off on a mission in the name of adventure, in the name of honour, in the name of justice.”

“Yes.”

“Why, Keenan? My prediction algorithms show you have a very low chance of survival, never mind success. And that’s just breaking out Franco and Pippa, before we even look at finding this psychic lump of mythological junk. There is a 99.97 percent chance that Pippa will rip off your head and piss down your neck. Why do it? Why risk so much?”

“Risk?” Keenan did not turn. His voice was obloquial. “Because I owe it to the memories of the ones I love.”

His words were so gentle they merged with the nearby hiss of the surf eroding the shingle beach.

Cam didn’t see the tears on the man’s cheeks.

Franco Haggis was in a world of pain.

“Get off me, you bastards!” he bellowed as the doctor and five stocky mental nurses squeezed into the Treatment Chamber and backed the swaying figure of Franco towards a row of benches. “I warn you, I used to be in a combat squad! I can kill a man with a single blow!”

“Of course you can,” said Dr. Betezh, standing with long powerful arms loose by his sides. His small black eyes were focused on Franco. His white crisp uniform was wrinkle-free, and only a little speckled with patients’ blood.

He looks like a shark, Franco realised.

And... a killer.

Franco felt the alloy bench press into his spine and he halted, calming his breathing. His head pounded from imbibed drugs. He felt groggy, senses treacle, limbs responding as if inebriated on the vodka he loved so much. With eyes gleaming like a cornered rat’s, he dropped his chin and allowed his hands to fall by his sides.

He would submit.

He would roll over and... die
...

Dr. Betezh took another step forward, with infinite caution. He was no fool, and had played this game a million times over, in simulators and in the real world. His arms lifted and he sensed the threatening presence of the nurses behind him; three carried steel truncheons, and Betezh’s nostrils twitched at the subtle smell of oiled metal. Curiously, it aroused him.

Another step forward...

One more.

The smile was just spreading to Betezh’s lips as Franco sprang, a right hook thundering against the doctor’s head with such power that Betezh was spun around a hundred and eighty degrees and dropped to his knees
.

There came a rush as the nurses charged Franco, accepting his powerful blows with an air of resignation until within the anarchy of mêlée a slam from a steel truncheon caught Franco across the forehead with a dull metallic
slap.
He went down, and he went down hard.

Dr. Betezh climbed to his feet as the five men (two with black eyes, one with a broken nose, one with estranged testicles) strapped Franco to the nearest bench. Buckles were tightened without finesse; straps levered into position with a weight of anger and pain. The men checked, double checked and triple checked every possible point of weakness.

“All yours, boss.”

Betezh nodded, moving to stand over Franco.

“Ahh, Franco.” Betezh leant forward, placing a hand on Franco’s arm. To an outsider, it would have appeared a gesture of tenderness, but as Franco’s eyes flickered open and clouds of red dissipated, he saw the movement for what it was: a frightening dead-zone of calm... before the oncoming rage of the storm.

“I was in a combat squad,” said Franco, groggy under imposed violence.

Betezh nodded, smiling kindly, and gesturing for the trolley which arrived with its one squeaky wheel. Franco knew what that squeaky wheel meant. It was the fun trolley: the pain trolley.

“What did you do, in this combat squad?” asked Betezh. He seemed suddenly interested. His bushy eyebrows were raised, and an emotion Franco could not understand had hijacked Betezh’s face.

“I was the... detonations expert.”

“You used to blow things up?”

Franco nodded, and as the needle slid into his vein he drooled a little, bloody saliva running from the corner of his mouth. He twitched a couple of times as Betezh stood back and without instruction—the nurses were good at their jobs, efficient to the point of bureaucracy—they removed Franco’s trousers and pulled apart his legs. They strapped his ankles into heavy steel shackles, buckling them tight.

“Not the green pads,” said Franco through a mouth of phlegm.

Betezh sighed, as two of the heavily-muscled mental nurses attached small green conductive pads to Franco’s balls, and spooled out the trailing wires to a gleaming machine. The machine looked innocent; functional, but innocent, like a gun without a trigger.

Betezh rubbed at his jaw, which throbbed from the impact of Franco’s tattooed knuckles. “Franco... there have been rumours that you plan an escape. At the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the ‘nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged’, we do not allow escape. Now, I will only ask you once: what are these plans?”

Franco looked up through the drug haze. He raised his middle finger, shackled as it was, to the bench.

“Sit on this,” he muttered.

“As you wish.” Betezh’s voice was stone. He looked over towards a nurse and nodded. The man flicked a switch and the machine gave a little whine, then a jolt against its restraining bolts as gears meshed and it found its trigger.

“Let me out of here,” mumbled Franco, glazed eyes trying to focus. “I ain’t mad! I tell you, I ain’t mad!”

“That’s what they all say.” Betezh leaned close with a threatening intimacy. “Now, my friend, I would like to say this isn’t going to hurt... but it will.” He nodded and smiled. “It’s going to burn you inside-out, all the way to Hell
.”

Betezh took a step back.

He gave a curt nod.

And the nurse turned the digital dial all the way to 10.

It was later, much later. Betezh sat in a broad leather chair with Franco’s screams still ringing in his ears. The kube buzzed in his hand and he initiated a burst, allowing a globe of light to grow rapidly in his palm. It was a long distance transmission; he could tell by the interference.