Veteran (26 page)

‘No, they definitely deserted. They made it to Crawling Town.’ Mudge upended the vodka bottle, draining the rest of it and tossing the bottle into a bin.

Crawling Town was a place as infamous as Balor’s New York. Well, not exactly a place; it was a city-sized, always-moving convoy made up of disparate gangs, road tribes and other disenfranchised people. They were left alone by the authorities because they travelled the Dead Roads, the line of heavily polluted and irradiated land that ran down the east side of the US from Lake Eerie to east Texas. An area considered largely uninhabitable by what passed for sane people these days. Pagan could see what I was thinking.

‘Have you not learnt?’ Pagan asked. I looked up at him.

‘You’re here now doing your thing. We need to do our thing, and we’ll go and do it whether you help or not. You’re safe now. Stay here, complete your little electronic god. Besides, New York seems to have worked out well for everyone but me.’ I didn’t add that it had worked out better than if we’d gone to Russia, but I think Pagan got the message.

‘You’re going out into the wasteland to chase a months-old lead to find someone who’s probably infected by something virulent and highly fucking dangerous. Will you listen to yourself?’ Pagan asked.

‘Yeah, we should stay here while you make God, because that’s more sensible,’ Mudge said. He sounded distracted. I think he was looking around for more booze. Pagan glared at him. Thing is, Pagan was right. The shots were too long, even for us. If we did find Gregor, chances are we’d just have to do him a favour and put a bullet through his head anyway.

‘Jakob, we need your help. We need your protection and we need you running interference for us. If the Grey Lady comes, you and Rannu are the best hope Morag and I have.’ It didn’t seem like much of a hope but I liked the way he’d emphasised that Morag needed me. Manipulative cunt. I looked at Mudge. He’d found another bottle from beneath my bed. He was watching me again, waiting for my response, his lenses moving in their sockets. I reached over and took the bottle from him.

‘You recording this?’ I asked him, and took a long swig of the vodka, enjoying it burn down my gullet.

‘Hell, yeah,’ Mudge was grinning.

‘Brilliant,’ Pagan muttered.

‘He’s right, you know?’ I said to Mudge.

Mudge nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Maybe we can do something if this works?’ I said, sounding pathetic even to myself. I tried to cover it by taking another long swig of vodka.

‘You going to give that back?’ Mudge asked. I held the bottle out to him but Morag took it. I suddenly noticed how flushed and nervous she looked. She took a long swig from the bottle.

‘You okay?’ I asked her. She nodded.

‘I think we should go to Crawling Town,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think your friend is diseased.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Pagan muttered.

‘What makes you say that?’ Mudge asked. Morag didn’t say anything.

‘This is bullshit,’ Pagan said.

‘Losing your religion?’ Mudge asked. Pagan glared at him.

‘Look, Morag,’ the old hacker began. ‘I know a lot has happened to you, and you think that you know—’

‘Don’t fucking patronise me,’ Morag said. That resolve of hers was back. I wished it wasn’t in this case. I didn’t want to go to Crawling Town. ‘He’s not infected. They were trying to communicate.’

‘How can you know that?’ Pagan asked, but I think we both knew the answer.

‘Just believe her,’ Rannu said. ‘I’ll go with you to Crawling Town,’ he added, sounding very formal. I looked over at him incredulously.

‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you?’ I demanded.

‘More the merrier,’ Mudge said. He’d taken the bottle of vodka from Morag and raised it to Rannu, who bowed.

‘Pagan, why don’t you stay and work on God? We’ll go. Balor will protect you,’ I said. He looked very uncomfortable with my suggestion.

‘I’ll come,’ he said finally.

That was when I realised two things. Pagan was happy when we were doing his insane things but not when we wanted to do ours. After all, going to Crawling Town wasn’t any madder than trying to make God, in fact probably less so, and if there was a chance we could help Gregor then I owed it to him. The other thing I realised was that Pagan really needed Morag’s help. That worried me.

‘This is insane,’ Pagan muttered again.

‘What is?’ A voice growled from the doorway. I looked up to see the massive and alien figure of our host standing in the entrance to the ward. He was dripping wet and leaving a trail of unpleasantly foul New York water behind him. He held Rannu’s kukri in his left hand. I think it was the first time I ever saw Rannu looking happy, but then again I hadn’t seen his face when he was beating me unconscious with my own arm.

‘You found it,’ he said, grinning. Balor walked over to the ex-Ghurkha’s bed. He didn’t smell very nice; only Mudge and Rannu seemed not to mind.

‘You deserved it back,’ Balor said.

‘He’s pretty much been searching for it non-stop for three days,’ Mudge said.

‘He’s got a lot of time on his hands then?’ I asked.

‘I think it’s sweet,’ Morag said. I wondered what the mischievous look was about as I tried to ignore a sudden surge of emotion I didn’t want to analyse too deeply.

‘I think it’s obsessive,’ Mudge suggested.

Balor stuck out a thick reptilian tongue that was sort of a bruised purple colour.

‘Very attractive,’ I muttered. Morag glared at me.

Balor ran the kukri blade across his tongue, drawing blood. All of us watched this in surprise.

‘Why?’ Mudge finally managed to ask.

‘Because the kukri cannot be put away before it’s bloodied,’ Balor said, blood dripping from his maw, and handed the curved knife back to Rannu. He seemed just as surprised as the rest of us.

‘It did draw blood - mine,’ I said.

Balor turned to me. ‘Do you feel more alive now?’ He seemed to be serious.

‘What, are you fucking mad? I just got near beat to death! Strangely that doesn’t make me feel more alive, just fucking sore!’ I shouted, sitting up in bed and getting pushed back gently by Mudge. Balor loomed over me, his face distorting with what I assumed was anger.

‘What did I tell you about respect in my house?’ he growled at me.

‘Oh, I respect you. As a fucking psycho!’ I spat before my sense of self-preservation kicked in. He considered what I said. I assumed he was just going to reach down and do something violent to me.

‘Good,’ he finally said, but not before I was covered in cold sweat. ‘You are all welcome, just tell me what you need.’ And he turned and walked out. I suddenly felt very tired, too tired. I realised I was crashing and crashing hard. I turned to look at Mudge. He was smiling at me.

‘You stimmed me?’ I asked. He nodded. I faded quickly. Like moving backwards quickly down a black tunnel. Further and further away from them all. The last thing I heard was Pagan berating Mudge for his irresponsibility.

The SAW ran dry. It had been my last cassette for the weapon and I’d long ago exhausted grenades for the launcher so I just dropped the weapon in the mud. I turned and jumped over the remains of a low wall. We’d been fighting a retreat since we landed. We were now in what had once been a small town. It had been some kind of centre for the surrounding rural communities when people had been able to grow things here. Now it was just a series of mazelike low walls sticking out of the mud, traces of the buildings that had once housed a community. It was mostly night; Sirius B was low in the sky. Fire and manoeuvre was rote now, we didn‘t even really think about it.

I tore the Benelli assault shotgun from the smartgrip back scabbard strapped to my pack and started firing three-round bursts at the Berserks sprinting towards us. The flechette penetrators burrowing into their hardened chitinous bodies before their explosive cores detonated. It was like watching them get chewed up from within. I was going through the motions. Crosshairs from the smartgun link over the next alien, fire, repeat until it was time to reload. Ignore the fact that what little cover I had was being eaten away by their returning fire. Ignore my multiple wounds. Ignore that we were dead anyway.

I watched Gregor sprinting towards me. I covered him as best I could. He turned and my audio dampeners kicked in as he fired a long burst from the railgun at the charging Berserks. I watched as several of them seemed to explode into liquid mid-stride. Gregor hit the quick-release catch on his gyroscopic harness. The whole rig along with the gun and ammo pack fell into the mud. Gregor was running again, pulling his personal defence weapon from a holster on his thigh, unfolding it as he ran. Leaping over the wall, sliding into the mud nearby before scrambling back to join us and then opening fire.

Like most signal types, Shaz favoured a laser. I could feel the heat from its beams as he fired bursts of bright red light into the remaining Berserks. The Tyler Optics laser carbine was set at a frequency designed to superheat what it hit rather than burn through it. Where he hit the Berserks I saw their solidified liquid flesh turn to a greasy black steam. I could hear him through my access to the command net requesting air and artillery support for an immediate evac. I could hear the hopelessness in Shaz’s voice. We were getting nothing from command. I understood the necessity of sacrifice but there seemed to be no gain in sending us to die like this.

Behind us I could hear Ash’s SAW firing long bursts accompanied by Mudge’s AK-47. The AK-47 was a replica of a pre-FHC weapon chambered for 9-millimetre long that he insisted on using. They were all around us and closing. We kept on taking Them down, thinning their numbers, but They kept on charging at us. The uneasy joke had always been that if They ever learnt tactics humanity was really screwed.

Concentrated shard fire had Shaz, Gregor and myself duck down into the mud as the low wall was chewed away and they were on us. I managed to get off a shot point blank into one of the eight-foot-tall monstrosities before dropping the Benelli and extending my knuckle blades. I rammed the blades up, sliding under chitinous plates like they trained us, augmented muscle and prosthetic driving the plates apart as black liquid poured all over me.

With some effort I heaved the dying alien to one side. The Berserk behind him swung a limb, ending in some kind of spiked weapon, into my rigid breastplate. It hit so hard it cracked the plate, causing the inertial undersuit beneath to harden. I landed on my back in the mud, retracted my knuckle blades, drew my laser pistol and the Mastodon and fired a lot. It seemed to take a while but the advancing Berserk fell back into the mud.

I managed to get to my feet before the next one tackled me and sent me sprawling back down. I dropped the pistols and just stabbed repeatedly into it as its power-assisted claws tried to peel me out of my armour. I was still stabbing a long time after it had stopped moving and had leaked all over me. It smelt like burnt plastic.

Eventually it dissolved over me. Gregor was there to pick me up, as ever. It had gone quiet. I retrieved my weapons, watching as Gregor cleaned black ichor off his sword bayonet. Shaz was doing likewise with his kirpan. Mudge was changing a clip and Ash was just looking out over the low wall.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. It seemed very quiet. It was now nearly dark. We were entering the short night of a planet in a binary system.

‘They’re just standing there,’ Ash said shaking her head. Mudge stood up.

‘Get down!’ I hissed, Gregor and Ash doing the same.

‘They’re not doing anything,’ Mudge said. He studied them for a while. I wondered how wasted he was and what it was this time. I crawled over to where Mudge was stood, cradling my automatic shotgun in the crooks of my elbows. I peeked over the low wall. Mudge and Ash were right. The Berserks were standing, swaying as if in some unfelt wind about two hundred metres back. Between them and us were a multitude of black, viscous oily puddles that showed where we’d killed their mates. A feeling was making its way through my fatigue, something not felt for a while - interest.

‘You ever heard of anything like this?’ I asked Mudge, who was intently studying the sky. I’d asked him because Mudge was one of the few of us who took an active interest in the rest of the war. He shook his head.

‘Can’t see it being anything good for us,’ Ash mumbled in her thick Brummie accent.

‘What do you want to do?’ Gregor asked. I had no idea. There were obviously too many of them for us to fight. I shrugged.

‘Get yourselves sorted. Patch yourselves and your armour up as best you can, check your ammo, ready secondary and tertiary weapons. Shaz, I know it’s a waste of time but keep on the command net. Got any time after that, we’ll have a brew.’

‘Then what?’ Ash asked. I could hear Mudge giggling.

‘If they haven’t killed us and they’re still playing silly buggers then we head back to the firebase and see if we’re in time for the last shuttle.’

‘Or we’re sharing the planet with a lot of angry demons,’ Shaz said.

‘Where’s Ash gone?’ I heard Mudge say. Then I saw the look of horror on Gregor’s face and Shaz screamed. I swung round bringing my shotgun up. I found an awestruck Mudge staring at a bit of what I can only describe as dark air.

‘She got sucked in,’ Mudge whispered.

‘Mudge!’ Gregor shouted as he brought his PDW up to cover the dark air. ‘We need you in this world!’ This seemed to bring Mudge out of it. He staggered back bringing his AK-47 up to cover it. A red beam lanced out turning part of the dark air into greasy steam.

‘Cease fire!’ I shouted. ‘Shaz, you watch our backs. I want to know what the rest of them are doing.’ Shaz stood there staring. ‘Shaz!’ He looked up at me, his eyes wide around his lenses, and then he nodded. Through the split screen on my internal visual display I could see through Shaz’s helmet camera.

The Berserks were still holding off in their rough perimeter. The dark air hadn’t move. It still stood where Ash had stood.