War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (9 page)

As they jumped to the ground from a low natural wall, boots thumping up clouds of dust, still Pippa did not turn; instead, she simply said, “I never did find out how you got your arse out of that bunker, Keenan. After they took us down, we were bundled into a Truk and fired away to separate holding cells. I couldn’t work out how you survived that metal bastard... The Tangled? Yeah, that was its name. How did you get out?”

“A liq-N bomb.”

“Liq-N?”

“Liquid nitrogen: I froze it, walked across the crackling metal surface, hooked back up to my PAD and hauled my arse to the exit. I never killed the damned thing, although I’m tempted to go back one day and fry the fucker, just out of principle. An evil piece of engineering if ever I saw one; no soldier should have to face that.”

Pippa turned. She looked a little older, with a few discreet lines around her eyes. She wore rough, hand-made clothing, bleached of colour through excessive multiple-washings. Her eyes held that same cold, emotionless gaze she reserved for enemies.

“I see you Franco; still as mad as a hatter?”

“Madder, I would have to say, something to do with the mercury. I do like your outfit, Pip; you out on the town?”

“Sort of.” She smiled, not a very nice smile.

Keenan and Franco moved to either side of the woman, who remained seated, turning back to stare over the still lake. Keenan glanced at the tank, then back to the water. A breeze ruffled his dark blond hair, and something took his spine in its fist and squeezed gently. It was an extremely uncomfortable feeling.

“What you waiting for?” he asked, knowing he didn’t want the answer even as he asked the question.

Pippa gestured towards the expanse, and it was only then Keenan saw the two swords lying at her feet. They were curved slightly, black bladed, hand beaten, primitive and yet still... deadly
.

“There’s a machine, in the lake. It wants to kill me. I’m waiting for it to surface.”

“A machine?”

“AI, old combat model, part of our little Clan War here on the moon.”

Keenan stared hard at her. “What the hell’s going on? We’ve come to release you from your prison sentence. We’ve come to free you. We’ve come to take you...”

“Home?” She laughed. It was a brittle sound. “I have no home. This place is as good as any... for one such as I. One who betrays, and was betrayed.”

“I did not betray you.” Keenan’s voice was gentle.

“You broke my heart.”

“I broke my own heart.”

“Well we’re fucking even then,” she snapped.

Deep below the still water there came a savage meshing of gears. Franco took a step back, cocking his weapon, and Pippa’s head smashed round. “No! This is my fight. I am the leader of this Clan, and as such I must answer the Call.” She leapt lightly from the rock and took up the two blades, twirling them slowly through the grey light. “You two back off!” She smiled. “If it kills me, feel free to shoot the hell out of it.”

Keenan and Franco moved away, leapt up onto the low wall and retreated a short distance up the scree slope. Keenan cocked his weapon, then glanced up behind the two men. “We’re being watched, yeah? I take it our little friends have arrived.”

Franco nodded. “About two hundred; they came up around the cliffs. Must be her Clan, or the enemy Clan? I’m not quite sure how it works on these prison worlds. Still.” He brightened optimistically. “Pippa’s done well for herself, ain’t she? Well done that girl!”

Keenan gave his head a little shake, watching Pippa move to stand by the water’s edge, swords poised. The lake was bubbling, frothing and seething. Something gleamed black and silver close beneath the surface.

“Looks like an old GG model to me,” Keenan muttered. “Now, they are tough motherfuckers.”

“GGs had human status,” said Franco, “which means if one went mad...”

“They’d dump it here. Yeah. Great.”

Pippa was pacing along the shore, which lapped her boots. The GG came frothing from the lake, leaping from the calm in a sudden burst of flying droplets to land in a crouch a few feet from where Pippa stood, swords limp, eyes fixed. The machine was humanoid in shape, but very slim, sculpted even. Its mechanical torso and limbs were dull black, enamelled and containing hydraulic joints. Behind its fists were huge retractable killing knives hot-welded to its chassis. Its head was silver and swept back to a sharp point. Eyes were dulled black and it grinned with over-sized mechanical jaws, containing long incisors that could inject a lethal toxo-poison, so deadly a human would be an internal bubbling mush before he hit the ground.

The GG unfolded fluidly, knives springing free as it flexed its arms and tilted its head, surveying Pippa. She swung her swords experimentally—loosening her shoulders—then attacked with blistering speed.

The two clashed, the GG’s long knives hammering left then right as Pippa’s swords smashed up and sparks showered the stone shore. Pippa whirled away, boots splashing the edge of the lake, but the GG attacked even as Pippa moved, bounding to her on all fours, knives striking fire against rock, fangs homing in on her exposed throat.

She ducked, rolled beneath hissing hydraulic legs, came up behind. One sword slashed across metal with a terrible squealing as the GG swayed, whirled, and a long black knife missed Pippa’s throat by a hair’s breadth.

Franco’s gun wavered. “Let me take it, Keenan.”

“No. She was right. This is her fight. We cannot interfere.”

“She can’t kill that, Keenan, not with a hand-beaten sword! The damned thing can’t even be cut!”

Keenan gritted his teeth. “I know.”

Pippa backed away, eyes surveying the GG. It, also, seemed to be watching her, weighing up her strengths and weaknesses. They were both fast—inhumanly fast—but Pippa was flesh and bone, easily diced, whilst the GG combat model was hardened TitaniumIII over a core-mesh frame. It could take an HTank on the head and still operate.

The GG stalked forward and halted. It spoke, jaws working in a loose approximation of speech mimicry. “You cannot survive this encounter. Forfeit now.”

Pippa grinned, shaking her head, black hair bobbing. “Come and eat steel, dickhead.”

The GG leapt, Pippa rolled right, one sword hammering across the machine’s metal abdomen as the left stabbed towards its shoulder—where the point struck—and lodged in the opening between shoulder joint and chassis. There was a screech of stressed steel. The GG spun around and Pippa’s sword was torn from her grasp.

She backed away, her one remaining blade held in both hands. She looked nervously about, as if seeking exit from a battle she could no-longer win.

The GG looked down at its torso, worked hard to remove the lodged weapon, its free hand fixed on the trapped blade and tugging on steel with tiny crunches of compressing metal. It didn’t see Pippa’s boots until they connected with its chest, and then it was too late.

The GG flailed back, struck stone in a shower of sparks with Pippa above it and driving down hard, knees on its chest and side, leaning her weight on the gripped and trapped sword, which acted as a leverand pinned the GG to the ground with its arm locked in position. The machine’s free arm lay trapped beneath its torso, and Pippa manoeuvred across the GG’s squirming body as it snapped at her with incisors, straining to inject her.

With the enemy pinned, Pippa lifted her free sword and hacked viciously at the GG’s neck. Once, twice, three times... the machine started to squeal, a sound of metal raped by metal, thrashing its head and squirming around in circles leaving grooves in the rocky shore. Its legs kicked, splashing in the water as Pippa continued to hack with a determined grimace. Her arm became a mechanical hammer, her sword a guillotine blade.

There came a final
crack
and sparks fluttered silver. Then another, and the GG’s head rolled out and away, splashing into the lake where it was instantly swallowed.

The limbs eventually stopped thrashing—slowly, as if reluctant to relinquish life—and Pippa stood and nodded towards Keenan and Franco, and the several hundred convicts lining the ridge with grim faces and glowing, proud eyes. She placed a foot against the GG’s chest and started to work at freeing her blade.

Keenan leapt down and moved to her. “Neat. You wedged the sword there on purpose, to use as a lever.”

Pippa nodded. “I’ve fought these before. Their arrogance precludes a need to acknowledge and understand their own weaknesses. However, I did have an ace up my sleeve.”

“What’s that?”

“The swords; made from TitaniumIV. Not many things can damage a combat GG. Even your bullets would have struggled to drop this son of a bitch. You have to know your enemy, Keenan. Always know your enemy.”

“Been a problem for you, this one?”

“Killed sixty of my Clan.”

Franco whistled, and watched as Pippa gave up trying to free the sword. She stretched, and gave a single wave to the criminals on the ridgeline. They faded away, like ghosts, and Pippa climbed and sat back on her cube rock to stare out over the still waters of the lake. She composed herself, arranging her body into a precise posture of meditation.

There came a minute of silence; then she said, “So you want me to come with you?”

“That was the idea,” blurted Franco, and Keenan gave him a kick on the ankle.

“Yeah.” Keenan met her gaze. “I’ve been given a mission, to travel to the planet of Ket. There I must find the Fractured Emerald, an ancient artefact, which can predict the future... and also see into the swirling chaos of the past.”

“And what do you require of it?” Pippa’s voice was fastidious, a whisper, her eyes hardwired to Keenan’s soul. “Information? Advice? How to avoid the situation we found ourselves in? How to protect your lover from pain? How to save a woman’s soul from an eternity of agony?”

“I would find the murderer of my wife and my two girls. I would find the man who butchered Freya, Rachel and Ally. I would seek out this man, and remove him from existence.”

Pippa thought for a while; her face unreadable, a blank. There followed a hiatus... and Keenan found his hand tightening on his MPK. He watched Pippa close her eyes and he remembered that face breathing slowly in sleep as his fingers traced lines across the cool skin of her silk neck and she turned and woke and smiled at him, reaching up to kiss him, her lips always soft, her breath always sweet.

Here it comes, he thought.

Why should she help?

She hates me. She wants me dead.

I was a damned fool to come here, a damned fool.

If she attacks, can I truly kill her?

Would I be physically ableto kill her?

Pippa’s eyes snapped open. She ran hands through her thick dark hair. When she spoke, it was with infinite care. “Your loss... greatly saddened me. Freya was a fine woman, your girls just... stunning.” Her eyes locked again on Keenan’s; he could read no emotion there. Again, blank
,
like those of a machine.

“Freya didn’t deserve what happened to her, Kee. She didn’t deserve anyof it. And the children... I agree with you. The murderer deserves to be brought to justice. The killer deserves to die. No crime like this should go unpunished.”

“So you’ll come?” said Franco, and Keenan glared sideways at him. “Sorry! Sorry.
Sorry!”

“You know if I leave here I break all codes. I will be sentenced in my absence to immediate death. They will send every hunter in the Quad-Gal after my sorry hide... and that’s if the implanted logic-cubes don’t melt my brain on exit.”

“I know,” said Keenan. He held out his hand to her, “But I need you anyway. We need you. Without you, we cannot do this. Without you, my family will remain unavenged.”

Pippa stepped lithely down from the rock and took Keenan’s hand. Then she stepped forward and kissed his cheek. There were tears in her eyes, tears on her face. Keenan could not read her expression... but it chilled him to his core.

“I will do this, Keenan, but not for you; I do it for Freya, I do it for Rachel and Ally; and I swear, Keenan, if you get in my way then I’ll slit your fucking throat and gut you like a fish. Understand?”

“I understand.”

She stalked away, down to the barely shifting edge of the lake, eyes on fire and staring out over the stillness. Franco approached and laid his hand on Keenan’s arm. He smiled kindly. “Volatile lady, that one.”

“Aye.”

“Don’t worry. She doesn’t mean it, mate.”

“Oh, she does,” said Keenan.

“She’ll help us, then?”

“Yeah.” He watched Pippa thrust her sword into the rock of the shore, where it quivered and sent ripples cascading over the glossy water. “She will fight for us, and she will die for us.”

“We can’t ask for more,” said Franco.

Keenan smiled; nodded.

“I agree,” he whispered.

Part 2

Kings of the Wild Frontier

Chapter 4

Scissor Sister

The City.

Retreat and watch in jaw-drop awe as three orbiting suns provide near twenty-four hours of dazzling daylight across the majority of continents; and hence perpetuate a non-stop trade. The locals call it “eternitytrade”, or to some, just the ability to
breathe.