War Machine (The Combat-K Series) (32 page)

“And you’re being a dick
.
You can take two crates. That’s final. So get unloading, and get those damn Dogs down here where we can see them. You got that?”

“Yes Pippa,” said Franco miserably.

Pippa stormed out. Franco stared at his stash. Then, with a long face, he began to unload the supplies.

Franco sat in the lead boat, ready to navigate, as Keenan stood on the platform facing Rebekka and a few of the Ket-i children who had come to say farewell. Pippa patted a few of the kids on the head, then jumped in beside Franco. The boat bobbed, and Franco fired twin engines. Water surged beneath the craft as the stealth engines settled into a quiet idle hiss.

Behind, linked by TitaniumIII cable, the larger of the two craft bobbed and tugged, and there, onboard, between two crates of tins, squatted the metal Dogs that had made the lives of the renegade children so miserable. Franco kept glancing back nervously, with his MPK not quite pointing at them and a grenade not quiteunclipped from his belt.

“I’m glad we’re getting out of here,” said Pippa quietly.

Franco glanced at her, saw her... fear?

“You OK, Pippa?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” She glanced at Rebekka. Franco noted the contact, but said nothing.

Klik appeared, face one huge smile and two guns strapped across his ebony back. He wore shorts and nothing else. His bare feet found purchase, and he landed lightly in the boat, moving to sit at the stern. He carried a bottle of drinking water, which he sipped at thoughtfully, surveying what he considered to be the aliens
.

Keenan stood, finishing a cigarette and patting some of the kids on the head. They giggled, and several swung on his arms as he glanced up, into Rebekka’s bright orange eyes.

“Seems like we’ve been through a lot together,” said Keenan.

“We have,” smiled Rebekka. “Listen, I’m sorry. About before...”

“Don’t mention it. You were actually right
.
Don’t apologise.”

“That’s extremely chivalrous of you.”

Keenan shrugged. “I’m a regular hero,” he said, voice sardonic, and he stamped out his home-rolled cigarette. “Listen... one day, one day soon, if I happen to be passing...”

“Call in,” grinned Rebekka, “if I’m still here. If I’ve moved on I will leave word with Fortune; you’ll be able to contact me that way. Although, I should be here for a length of time.” She glanced down at the children, and Keenan detected love in her eyes: love mingled with sorrow, and a need to do something good, a need to do something selfless. He had seen that look a million times on the faces of a million aid workers in battlezones across the Helix War. He appreciated it, even envied it, but he did not truly understand. The problem was, Keenan was a killer. Deep down, when you stripped away civility, society, honour... when things got dirty and brutal, Keenan was just a killer. He recognised this in himself, and it shamed him.

“Good luck,” said Keenan.

“I’ll stay armed.”

“Yeah, I’ll make sure these Dogs never bother you again.”

“Thank you.”

She stepped a little closer. Keenan could smell her scent, her natural perfume: the aroma of woman, albeit an alien woman. He felt his senses go a little dizzy, and grinned.

“Goodbye kiss?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“Never say no.”

She leaned forward, her lips touching his. Their mouths opened, just a little, a symbiosis of breath, the most gentle touching of tongues. The kiss lasted not quite long enough to indicate love, but just a little too long for friendship.

Keenan turned, boots landing in the boat with a thud. “Let’s go,” he said.

Pippa glanced sideways. “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

“Fuck off.”

“It was tender, Keenan, honest. I was quite moved; touched. Maybe you should stay with her? You could have a half-human half-prox family together.”

“I’m not in the mood, Pippa.”

“Are you everin the mood?”

Keenan said nothing, but lit a cigarette as the convoy buzzed through the Milk Sea, under the protective embrace of the Gem Rig, and out onto open waters. Waves slapped the boats’ hulls. Heat slammed them like a wall. He checked his maps, and nodded as Cam gave a tiny series of beeps; Cam was going on to scout ahead to try to work out just how dangerous the city of Amrasar was, and, more importantly, what kind of weapons they were stacking.

Cam disappeared, humming softly.

“Deeper into the lion’s den,” Keenan muttered, and watched the pink pastel horizon drift by.

Pippa killed the engines and they bobbed, riding gentle waves. There was nothing around them: no craft, no ships, no land mass. A soothing wind skimmed white waters. Franco, stripped to knife-hacked combat shorts and his sandals, clambered to the back of the craft, squeezed past Klik and a pile of RPGs, and tugged the two boats together. He stepped tentatively between the vehicles and looked back at Keenan. Keenan, as usual with bedraggled home-rolled between his lips, gave a single nod.

Franco moved to the first Dog, its twisted bestial face open in a frozen snarl of dripping mercury saliva. Franco grasped a plank of wood, levered it under the machine, and tipped it into the sea.

It made a
thunk
and a splash, and disappeared instantly. The waters rolled back in, surged. The Dog was gone. Franco tipped the second Dog into the Milk Sea, then moved to the third, a broiling frozen inferno. As he tipped the deadly, merciless machine into the white waters there was a sizzle. A cloud of super-heated steam shot up, and the Dog sank without trace.

“They’re gone,” said Pippa.

“Good riddance,” said Keenan.

Franco watched the sea, and was joined by Klik who stared down. He thought the young black boy was going to dive in after them, for a moment. Instead, he raised his hand in a military salute.

“What you doing, boy?” Franco’s voice was gentle.

“I am thinking of all those who died. It is right these Dogs were given a dishonourable death, not by blade or bullet, but by drowning.”

“So on Ket, to drown is dishonourable?”

“Very much so,” nodded Klik. He turned, and tears glistened in his deep green eyes. “You sink, you drown, you become a part of the sea. You are consumed by the World Warrior who condemns you to an eternity of pain and servitude.”

“Will that happen to us if we drown here?” Franco tapped the inflated wall tentatively.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go,” said Keenan.

Franco stared down at the opaque sea. He spat after the Dogs. “Rot in hell,” he said.

Their trip went smoothly for the next two days, as they baked under the apparently endless Ket suns. Even Franco, a parallel to the most pasty of gothic game-playing indoor individuals, started to develop a tan, albeit the true lobster redneck tan of the ginger. Freckles rioted like measles across his shoulders, arms and forehead. The members of Combat K took turns piloting the boat and its trailer in order to relieve the boredom.

Keenan and Pippa navigated, checking one another’s directions and waypoints; Franco acted as cook, and everybody was heartily annoyed when they realised that his entire stock of food consisted of PreCheese and a whole damn crate of horseradish.

“I mean, horseradish,” said Keenan as he tucked into his third consecutive meal of tinned rubbery cheese smeared with horseradish. “I don’t even
like
horseradish.”

“It adds a harsh and fiery epilogue to any meal,” grunted Franco.

“One hundred and ninety fucking jars,” said Pippa, “you mental, drugged-up moron!”

“Hey, you were the one who said I could only bring two crates!”

“So?”

“Technically, it’s your fault.”

“My fault?” shouted Pippa, spitting out a mouthful of horseradish. “Come here, I’ll snap your damn neck.”

Franco danced back, making the boat rock, and spilling a long stream of PreCheese cubes to bounce rubbery around the floor of the boat. Keenan grabbed Pippa’s arm.

“Leave him be. We shouldn’t have trusted a lunatic with the food supplies. It’s all our fault. And, ultimately, it’s my mission; if you want to blame somebody, blame me.”

Pippa sighed, and softened. Her skin, now tanned a deep brown, glistened with sweat. She shook her head. “It’s OK, Keenan. I’m just hot, tired, and not relishing fighting these bastards. Maybe I’m just getting old. I no longer look forward to the contact.”

“You did real well back in The City.”

“That was different. I had no choice.”

“And we have a choice now?” Keenan’s voice was sharp.

“We do, Keenan. We can walk away. Hire transport; get the hell out of here. We don’t have to take on an entire bloody Ket city. God only knows what archaic alien weapons they’ve got; and that’s the problem: they’re aliens. We’re not really sure what to expect, despite our research; not sure what we’re going to find inside that city, inside the Metal Palace.”

“Yeah, I noticed eye-witness reports were thin on the ground in the materials we got from the GalaxyWeb and Fortune.”

“That’s because the Ket don’t understand the word prisoner
.
The Ket-i warriors do not build prisons; they do not have cells or handcuffs or even understand the conceptof keeping an enemy alive. After all, they kill the children of their enemies, right? It was an ethos that went down badly during the days of The Helix War.”

“I remember,” said Keenan acidly.

They cruised in silence for a while, skimming waves, riding troughs. Klik sat in contemplative silence throughout the trip. Sometimes he would study Keenan’s map; sometimes he merely closed his eyes as if in meditation.

“What you thinking about?” asked Franco at one point, just as the one hour night was falling.

“Death,” said Klik quietly.

“That all?”

“And revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“When I have repaid my debt to you people, I have a mission of my own.”

“What’s that?” asked Franco warily.

“I would kill the men who murdered my family. I will slaughter them in their beds. I will cut their throats as they have sex. I will shoot them between the eyes as they take a shit. I will find them, wait for the moment of greatest vulnerability, and then I will take them down.”

“How many are responsible?”

“About thirty,” said the young boy, his eyes dark and brooding. For the first time Franco shivered; this young child was no longer a child, but a machine designed for killing, an abomination created by the horrors of his violent childhood.

“Violence breeds violence,” said Pippa, moving close. She looked at the sky as the most incredible sunset painted the world. Greens, yellow and purples radiated like a slowly revolving kaleidoscope across a tattered sky.

“I wish we could all love one another,” said Franco. He leered at Pippa in the fast-falling gloom. “Actually,” he began.

“No.”

“But Pippa!”

“No!”

“We could have some of our own loving.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“Still got the hots for Keenan, have you?”

“
What?”

“Well,” Franco grinned, and gestured to himself, “how could you possibly pass this up?” He tutted and shook his head. “I know, deep down, that you’re hot for me baby, crying for me baby, slickfor me baby. But Keenan just gets in the way. What about if I tip him over?”

“Oy!” snapped Keenan. “I heard that.”

“Sorry boss.”

“Why don’t we get some sleep?”

“I will keep watch,” said Klik. “I am used to the short nights. I do not fear the dark.”

“OK,” nodded Keenan.

Wrapping K-blankets around their shoulders, tiny whines signified climate systems switching and aligning. They closed their eyes and within a few seconds Franco was snoring loudly and giving the occasional horseradish fart.

Pippa and Keenan shook their heads and snuggled down—not too close together—and certainly not touching, as Klik scanned the horizon through the purple blackness, and thought dark thoughts of revenge.

Keenan opened his eyes in the black. Sleep fell from him like a cloak. Her arms were around him, holding him tight, holding him as if he were falling and she never, ever wanted to let go. Keenan shuffled down a little more into his blanket. A vast sky stretched overhead. Tiny stars glittered. Pippa snuggled closer against him, her face rubbing against his chest. He smelled her hair, and the perfume of her skin. She smelled good.

“Babe?” he whispered.

“Mmm.” She nuzzled at him again and he was instantly hard, and instantly regretted it. Memories flashed into his mind: sex, hard sex, gentle sex, his tongue tracing trails on her sweat-streaked skin. And then... the gun, caressing his temple. “I should kill you,” she growled. And all: crashing, like a black sea against black rocks and tumbling wild and brutal down into... the present.

He stroked her hair, gently, as if afraid that when she awoke she would stab him through the heart.