War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (6 page)

“You have news?” said a female voice.

Betezh nodded. “Yeah. Franco remembers.”

“Remembers what? I thought he was drugged?”

“He remembers Combat K, and his position within the group.”

“Betezh, you were placed there to controlhim, to sedate him, to damn well stop him from remembering
.
If the others ever found out...” She left the implied threat hanging in the air.

“We should have killed him, back on Terminus5. We should have killed them all.”

“Maybe.” The woman’s voice was too sharp. “Well, the time will soon come. Akeez has contacted Keenan; we cannot allow him to proceed down the path we anticipate.”

“Do you want me to kill Franco? I can do it tonight.”

“Not yet. He knows a lot about our operation, if only he could remember it. What you have told me amounts to shit. His recall is as blurred as his history. However, he could still be useful to us.”

“We walk a dangerous wire,” said Betezh carefully. He did not want to antagonise.

“What is life without a little danger? Without thrill? Without challenge? It becomes nothing more than a stale and second-hand experience; an armchair performance, a fucking banality.”

“It’s ironic,” said Betezh, voice low, “but sometimes I wonder if you should be the one locked away, instead of Franco. I wonder who is the more sane?”

Kotinevitch’s brown eyes narrowed. She smiled, showing neat little teeth. “Insanity is my middle name,” she said. There came a long pause. “I have contacted Mr. Max.”

She heard the harsh intake of Betezh’s breath. “If you play with fire, expect to get burned.”

“He is efficient.”

“Vitch,” said Betezh, voice low and filled with... she tried to place it. She settled on concern
. “
Mr. Max is unpredictable. I strongly recommend you leave him out of this business. Where Combat K is concerned, he is not appropriate.”

“He gets the job done, when all others fail. That’s what counts.”

“He is guilty of genocide,” said Betezh, voice so soft it was barely more than a whisper. “We cannot trust him. You have heard the rumours? You have heard the dark legend?”

“If you play at being soldier boys,” said Kotinevitch, words and eyes colder than frozen hydrogen and billion-mile distant, “then expect to get fucking annihilated.”

“And Franco?” persisted Betezh.

There came a moment of consideration; then a sigh.

“OK. Kill him.”

Chapter 2

Excision

It was late evening.

Keenan stood on his veranda, a fluted glass of Jataxa in one hand, home-rolled cigarette between his lips, smoke stinging his eyes as he watched three distant yachts superimposed on silver waves.

“You made all the arrangements?”

“Yes.” Cam settled beside Keenan and said nothing for a while. Keenan allowed the comfortable silence to extend as a breeze filled with salt ruffled his dark blond hair.

The second meeting between Keenan and Prince Akeez had gone more smoothly, especially with Cam and Fortune as mediators. Five million gem-dollars had been transferred to Keenan’s account at Off-World Holdings.

“Night’s falling,” said Cam finally. “Time to be moving; we don’t want to miss our private Y Shuttle. It’ll dock with our new transport 10,000 klicks post-orbit.”

“Did you get the Hornet? You said you were experiencing teething... problems?”

“No problem, Keenan. I got the Hornet. Three years old, just had an SMOT. Excellent condition; only twenty billion miles on the clock! Bargain at half the price.”

“Hold on,” Keenan back-tracked, “what do you mean, ‘we’? You said ‘We don’t want to miss our private Y Shuttle.’”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Oh no.”

“Keenan,” bristled Cam, “I am your Security PopBot. I am a GradeA Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3150. I have stayed on Galhari because I like you. However, I feel the current challenge has become a little bit... below my future achievement plane.”

“You mean you’re bored?”

“Well, I didn’t like to say anything before...”

“Cam, you’re a machine!”

“Even so, an MIR of 3150 actually outranks most life-forms in the Quad-Gal. If you want to be pedantic, you could say I am more human than human, certainly more intelligent than most of the dregs you find knocking about the galaxy these days.”

“Christ, Cam. I didn’t realise you had such a... a sense of self importance.”

“Still, my authentic ownership documentation with dealer stamp is in your name. You do, in fact, own me. As your property, I demand Possession Rights. If you don’t take me with you, I will initiate a state of immediate SD.”

“SD?”

“Self-destruct.”

“Bribery, damn you!” Keenan thought for a moment. “OK, let me think this one through. Answer me this: if we were dragged into a combat situation, separated from our firing team and our shuttle marooned on a hostile planet, would you, and this is important now Cam, would you be able to open a tin of beans?”

“Yes. Ha ha, very droll.”

“OK, OK. Would you be able to cook a sausage?”

“My sides are splitting, Keenan. You are a modern day stand-up comic. Now, can we get going?”

“Your loss of a sense of humour’s convinced me. What time did you say we were catching the Y Shuttle?”

“Five minutes.”

“You sure you’ve got all the papers sorted? I’d hate to reach Shuttle Emigration and stand there looking like a dick because you’d forgotten our exit visas.”

“Exit visas?”

“Only kidding.”

“Don’t dothat Keenan. You’ll give me a... a...”

“You can’t have a heart attack. You haven’t got a heart.”

“I was going to say nano-circuit modular burnout, actually
.”

Keenan flicked his cigarette into the falling darkness, hoisted his pack, gave one last lingering look at the sea, and strode through his house for the last time. As he initiated D:LOCK-down, he thought grimly,
and I hope this isn’t for the final time.

Final
,
as in:terminal. Terminally not coming back
.

Cam followed the big ex-soldier, grumbling bitchily.

Franco Haggis stared from the barred window at the rain. It pounded from thunder-grey heavens.

What the hell am I doing here?

His past was a maelstrom of confusion, memories a shower of snow in a snow-globe without continuity or even a timeline. He didremember some things. He remembered Combat K. He remembered Keenan. And he remembered the Visit—just seven days ago—when Keenan had explained The Plan to a drugged-up Franco.

Yes, ThePlan to get free.

God, I wish I had one of those magic rainbow pills.

As night fell, so the patients were allowed their evening “relaxation” in the common room of the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the “nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged”. More importantly, jackets were notrequired
.

The common room was predictably sterile, as benefited the environment for a daily gathering consisting mainly of deranged individuals. The walls were green, a puke and pus derived hospital green, the green of slopped-out cells, the green of plague and infection and rotten dead flesh. Padding lined the walls, and the floor lay bedecked in a faded, patterned linoleum that made it easier to clean up the piss.

Franco ambled around aimlessly, staring out of the high windows at the rain. He was sick: sick of the drugs and the patronising, sick of the loonies, sick of having electrodes clamped to his Roger.

“
Hi Franco.”

“Hi Monkey.”

Monkey was a fat man with a mane of curly black hair and a tiny head that was almost perfectly round. His little head sat atop a distended, chocolate-grown body like a pea on a pie. He was, to all intents and purposes, mad. And he carried a terrible secret, to which Franco held the key
.

“Fancy a game of Monopoly?” said Monkey.

“Yeah.”

Franco, however, despite the drugs and the rain and the melancholy, found it hard to contain his excitement. Franco had been saving his daily rations as part of The Plan, as explained by a heavily disguised Keenan: The Plan which was to be carried out... tonight
.

They set out the Monopoly board. Franco chose the old boot.

“Why do you choose that old boot every time?” said Monkey conversationally.

Franco gave a sly look left and right. The guards, ever watchful with steel truncheons and sprays of laughing gas, were vigilant, narrow eyed. Seeing a friend with a broken spine did that sort of thing. It taught you not to fall asleep on duty for fear of waking up with fewer limbs
.

“
Luck, mate. I always used to choose ElBooto... back when I was in the Combat Squad.”

“Ahh yes. The Combat Squad.” Monkey had heard the story a thousand times.

Monkey dealt brightly coloured money and Franco leant forward and placed a cube of chocolate, obsessively hoarded from his rations, at the centre of the Monopoly board. It sat, brown and soft, and slightly oozing amidst a scramble of little green houses and red plastic hotels.

Monkey froze, mid-deal, eyes growing wide. His hand moved so fast it was a blur... and the choc had gone: vanished, eaten, dissolved. Monkey continued to deal the money without a word, as if nothing had happened.

Because, deep down inside his head, it hadn’t.

Franco delved into the secret lining of the loose cotton sacking that masqueraded as clothing. Carefully, he placed another cube of chocolate on the board.

Once more, like magic, it vanished.

The two inmates started to play Monopoly. Franco, as usual, started to lose, but on this occasion he refrained from his usual whining. And as Franco fed Monkey more and more choc chunks, a gradual change started to transmogrify the peanut-headed lunatic; a red flush flowed across his pimpled cheeks and down his arms, covering his skin with deep red blotches. His eyes went wide—dinner plate wide—and his nostrils flared alarmingly. Then, like the gradual movement of tectonic plates, Monkey began to tremble. This state of illness rapidly accelerated until it was not just a tremble of dehydration, but a severe DT jiggle of a middle-aged alcoholic junkie during enforced withdrawal.

Not perturbed by these esoteric changes in his companion, Franco continued to feed him choc with the merciless evil of a piranha chewing an injured fish. After all, the pond was deep and wide, and Franco was fed up being the one who always bit the hook.

Monkey suddenly halted, one hand suspended over a card which read: Go To Jail.

Franco glanced around, nervous now, but none of the guards seemed to have noticed. Franco continued to play alone, continued to shuffle his old boot across The Angel of Islington and The Old Kent Road, continued to place choc on the saliva-smeared and modestly melting board... and watched with barely disguised amazement as Monkey stuffed yet more and more brown lumps into his frothing, spasmodically working jaws. Chocolate streamers ran down his chin, connecting him gooely to the game board to create one gelatinous pulsating brown salivating whole.

Then, Monkey stood up.

He quivered, frothed and jerked.

With a blink, Franco became aware of his proximity to a primed bomb, and climbing to his feet he eased away as inconspicuously as possible, leaving Monkey twitching an electric-chair shuffle
.

The guards noticed.

One groaned. It was a groan of genuine pain
.

“Shit, Monkey’s gone and had chocolate. Again.”

“Jesus wept, don’t you people know what happens to this son of a bitch when he gets even a sniff of a fucking Helix Crunchy Bar?”

Franco grinned nervously. He estimated he’d fed Monkey around seventeen huge choc bars, begged, scrounged, borrowed and stolen from other inmates and his own modest stash during the preceding week. Now it appeared Monkey was going to a) explode, b) take off like a rocket, or c) do something unpredictable. Franco shuffled towards the rear of the rearmost guard... in readiness.

Monkey suddenly screamed and leapt onto the table, stamping bare feet over the Monopoly board and scattering green houses and paper money like escaping butterflies. He tore his gown to reveal a rotund, red-blotched and pulsating body with a belly that squirmed like an alien pregnancy... and as the guards edged forward with grim faces and steel truncheons raised in threat, so Monkey started to fart and defecate, reaching ponderously behind his quivering arse-cheeks and scooping up his own faeces. These he launched with unerring accuracy at the gagging, heaving, whining, retching mental nurses.

“Wow,” whispered Franco in reverent awe,
“
so that’swhat happens!”

He stretched forward, tapped the guard before him on the shoulder. The man turned... into a savage right-hook that broke his jaw and dropped him. Franco dragged the guard towards the large games cupboard, half-closed the doors, and hurriedly removed the guard’s uniform.