Redemption Protocol (Contact) (3 page)

He lost everything.

He associated with scum; the only people who would associate with him. He realized they looked down on him.

He dreamed about one of the bridge crew. She begged for her life. He taunted her as she begged for her life – he congratulated her on how convincing she was. Of course she was convincing. She looked at him at a loss, not knowing how to communicate with such a monster. He shot her in the head.

She had been real. It had all been real.

Forge's set up had been flawless. The implications were undeniable.

It was genocide. A terrorist act; committed by a lone assassin with a background in covert operations. The authorities would expose, eviscerate and execute him – the loner who'd gone criminally insane.

They would show he had the training. They would show he had the temperament. That he was perfect.

~    ~    ~

Five months later, Havoc followed Gillance along the dimly lit passage. The darkness thrown by the broken spot lights grew continuous as they reached the end of the corridor. At least it hid the dirt.

Gillance's voice rasped in the shadows.

“You can stay in here. Sorry.”

Havoc stepped inside the dirty little room; a screen, foam padding and a wall stacked with booze. A shitty corner of a refugio outside a mining installation on a Briarworld. About as low as it gets.

He eyed the booze.

“You having a party?”

“No. You've had some offers, five agents. Some good offers, actually.”

“Anything on Forge?”

“Exercises in Stara. Leave it for now. You look like shit.”

“I feel worse.”

“Frozen for four months.” Gillance shook his head. “Zaebi knows where they stashed you.”

As illicit cargo, he'd been reheated inside a nearby meat factory instead of a proper clinic. He felt like a punch bag force fed rat poison.

“Lucky to be alive, eh?”

Gillance tipped his head like he wasn't so sure.

“What's wrong, Gill?”

“I need to get something.”

Havoc shrugged and looked around. Louise would be disgusted. Havoc pulled out a picture card and balanced it against the screen. He tapped the card and his favorite picture of his wife and kids appeared. The day was fantastic, the sky clear and blue with the mountains forming a spectacular backdrop. Louise was in the center and to either side of his beautiful wife, their skis angled in wide Vs, were Jack and Jenny. His kids leaned back at such improbable angles that it looked like the laws of physics had been temporarily suspended. His kids smiled up at their mum, bent so far back that they could actually see her smiling back at them. Havoc loved the picture; so happy, carefree and full of love.

He smiled. The place looked better already. He touched his son's head in the picture.

“Happy birthday, little guy.”

How many more would he miss?

Gillance appeared at the door.

“You need to see this.”

Havoc frowned.

“A threat?”

Gillance ignored him as he activated the screen.

'Vigilante's say they will not hesitate to dispense justice on John Havoc's family, now the deadline for him to take their place has passed.'

“Shit! This is now?”

Gillance paused the feed as he shook his head.

“Two months after Jemlevi.”

Havoc’s legs failed and he sat.

“It's bad. The worst.”

He couldn’t believe it.

“It's done?”

“They streamed it live.”

Havoc’s world disintegrated around him.

“It's here if you want to see it. Or I can tell you. Either way, it's bad.” Gillance looked at the crates of booze. “You want to watch?”

He nodded dumbly, still crumbling. Gillance left.

He was alone with the bright white screen. It was a doorway to hell.

He stepped through it.

On the news reports, the vigilantes had given him five days to give himself up after his family's abduction. He would have done it, if he hadn’t been illegally stowed in a merchant cruiser, frozen in a nitrogen compound block. After the deadline expired, the vigilantes held a mock trial. His family huddled together looking frightened. Guilty on all charges. They announced the punishment. Louise screamed and his kids cried in confusion as they were dragged away.

They gave his family to eight Vexmeth addicts. People who would do anything for a fix. They deprived the addicts of their drugs then unleashed them on his family, providing them with more drugs when they considered enough pain had been inflicted. This not only allowed the vigilantes to deny, in their own minds, the horror of their crimes, but also handed the torture of his family to the most depraved minds imaginable.

The vigilantes used sophisticated medical care to prolong his family's lives. They kept Jack alive for sixteen hours and eleven minutes. Jenny lasted three hours and twenty seven minutes longer before permanently losing consciousness. Louise, on the other hand, they managed to keep alive for forty two hours. Given what they did to her, it was quite a feat.

Havoc watched the vigilantes' stream, gnawing his hand until it bled. He didn't let himself get drunk or look away. He made himself live every minute. Every long, unending, infinite minute. After all, his family had. As he watched, the names of the three hundred and six thousand, four hundred and sixty one people from Jemlevi that he'd murdered scrolled along the bottom of the screen.

For forty two hours, Louise – his lover, his confidante and his best friend – was tortured, degraded and ultimately killed after being forced to watch the same thing happen to her children.

It took nearly four days to watch it all. First he died in inches, then yards, then leagues. He sobbed and denied and roared and pleaded and learned that you didn't need to die to go to hell. His face hardened into a distorted mask. Louise screamed for him, over and over, as her humanity was stripped away. But he wasn't there. He had run while his family had stayed and they'd paid for his crime. It wasn't fair. But nothing was fair.

Nothing was fair.

His soul flickered and died in the neon glare.

His guilt was all consuming. His nights were ravaged by nightmares. The images cut his mind. His family begged to die, offering anything to escape that hell. But there had been no escape, except death.

General Claudius Forge was featured prominently in the news coverage of his family's abduction. Forge deplored what had happened, whilst subtly hinting that the vigilantes' reaction was understandable. Forge shook his head at what his former subordinate, John Havoc, had done, inexplicably, and how these vigilantes had reacted, barbarically, in return.

If blood could boil, Havoc’s would have burned a hole in the world.

The only thing left in his hollowed out existence was retribution. He didn't see it as revenge, he saw it as justice. He was going to settle a score on a cosmic scale. The annihilation of Forge, his former hero. Forge was going to die and he was going to burn in hell.

He had the training. He had the temperament. Perfect.

Reflection

 2. 

The valley was idyllic. The lake stretched away before them, the small island near its center abundant with plant life. The forest surrounding the lake came down almost to the water's edge, shades of green streaked with golds and browns; a multitude of deciduous trees on the autumnal turn. On the far side of the valley, the ground steepened as it rose higher and the ridge on the skyline was dusted with snow. The sun glanced over the ridgeline and the lake glittered with refracted light. The early morning air was crisp and cool with a light breeze pushing small ripples across the surface of the water.

Havoc loved the taste and smell of the cool air, laced as it was with the scents of the lake and the forest. He loved to breathe it in and feel it reinvigorate and calm him at the same time. He would have taken a deep breath right now, savoring it, had not even gentle breathing created pressures that made his bodily fluids rise up and gush out of the wounds in his chest and stomach. He watched the rivulets wend their way down the front of his suit, splitting and thinning before finally trickling into the lake. It was, he thought, unfortunate.

His relaxed attitude could, at least in part, be attributed to his stoical nature. He would attribute it more to the medically inadvisable amount of hytelline he’d already vened just to function enough to get them here. He only had three shots left.

He could feel the pain beginning to break through, nebulous forms probing at the edge of his awareness. He was going to need another shot and soon. Drugs were usually the difference between a good death and a terrible one. He'd seen it enough times to know.

He looked at the Professor lying next to him. They were both slumped against a smooth rock on the edge of the lake, lying in a shallow pool of what had been clear lake water but was now slowly discoloring, at least around him. He had dragged them here a few minutes ago, after they had so rudely interrupted the local wildlife by crashing near the island.

“How are you, Professor?”

“I feel alright, thank you. Surprisingly warm actually.”

“Hmm.”

“I could do with resting for a few more minutes though, if you don't mind.”

“Sure.”

They looked out across the lake. The flames from the crashes were flickering out; even the one in the forest was dying away. Chemicals glistened on the surface of the water around the three wrecks in the lake. Birds returned to the island, some easily picked out against the fresh avenue of flattened trees and churned earth on the far side of the valley. Only two bodies still floated at their end of the lake. Havoc thought they must have some kind of buoyancy pack for medical recovery. Bit late for that.

“That looks very painful,” the Professor said.

Havoc frowned at his left leg. It was snapped at the knee and bent in the wrong direction, rising out of the water with his foot facing him like a grotesque puppet. Below the surface, splintered bones and torn ligaments interleaved and twisted back on themselves.

“It's ok, thanks.”

“I didn't get the chance to thank you.”

Havoc made a faint gesture with his hand.

“No need to thank me. I should really apologize.”

“That might be the most impressive thing I've ever seen.”

“Thanks.”

The Professor was silent as the question hung unasked.

“They should be here, Professor, they definitely will be. It’s just a delay. It won’t be long.”

Best case, he thought.

“I see.”

A little time passed. Havoc’s pain built steadily, advancing past his outer defenses and pressing in on him. Broken ribs down his back, crush injuries on his internal organs, two high velocity rounds that had passed right through him. It hurt to breathe. He tried not to.

They lay quietly, the water gently lapping against them.

“My hands feel very warm now. And my back.” The Professor paused. “Please be honest with me.”

The question hung in the air for a while.

“With the discoloration on your hands starting, you've got maybe twenty minutes.”

The Professor looked down at his hands, surprised. A darkening purple hue spread from his wrists onto his palms.

“Gosh. I hadn't noticed.”

The Professor turned to him, looking into his remaining eye. He'd had the forethought to drop the Professor on the side he could still see out of. He felt thick liquid oozing out of his left eye socket. The burns down that side of his head gave his skin a peculiar sensitivity to the air.

The Professor pursed his lips.

“Is there anything I can do for you...? I mean...”

“No. Thanks, Professor.”

The Professor glanced down at himself.

“I'm scared about how much it will hurt.”

Havoc thought the Professor sounded a little ashamed of himself. He shouldn’t be. Now that his hands had started to discolor, the pain would increase quickly. They designed it that way. The Professor was right to be worried – he would never have known pain like it. Sweat had already broken out on the Professor’s forehead.

“I wonder why the pain? It seems so unnecessary and cruel.”

Havoc reached over and tapped his finger onto the Professor's wrist, injecting two shots of hytelline.

“If you're hiding, you reveal your position. This will help. Don't worry, Professor. There won't be any pain.”

“Thank you.”

One shot left.

A large bird, perhaps a heron, cruised gracefully over the water with a fish in its slender beak. It threw forward its wings as it stalled and landed on the island, scattering a few smaller birds. The Professor relaxed his head back as the hytelline took effect, enveloping him like a sheet of damp muslin and cooling the burning that covered his body.