Solar Kill

by Charles Ingrid

  He walks through the enemy, gauntlets up, spewing death, and the bodies fall before him, exoskeletons crackling under the weight of his passage. And as he walks, he sings a bloodsong, and the killing satisfies him. But then, inside, he quails a little as he begins to recognize the faces of his enemies, and they’re not made of exoskeleton, but flesh … Sarge, Bilosky, Marciane, men whose names he does not remember, but their faces are not alien as they roll over in crimson death. He holds his gauntlet up a moment, ceasing fire, but it drops into position again of its own accord, despite what he wants. He cannot control the spew of firepower even when his own face appears in front of him and he kills himself, but he plows through the ranks and he does not, cannot, scream until he shoots the girl and then she screams, and his own echoes it, finally.

  Jack sat up in the bed. He found himself panting, his heart pounding desperately in his chest. He covered his face with his hands, awake again, this time thankfully.

  The darkness split as the door opened, and Amber slipped in, not turning on his light, but leaving the hall light on, shining like a beacon through the doorframe.

  “Jack?”

  “I’m okay. Just go back to bed.”

  She hesitated, a bath towel wrapped around her, hiding her nightgown and the frail body that was just beginning to curve with a woman’s shape. Then she sat down at the far corner of the bed. “It’s not all right. I don’t have dreams like this. I thought I might, but I don’t. You’ve been waking up seven, eight times a night.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “It’s not. You shouldn’t have hired out for Sadie, I know it.”

  He wiped his face, and surprisingly, found it dry. But he couldn’t wipe away the blood-splattered image of that last death, and now she sat, looking at him with worried accusation. “Go back to bed.”

  She crossed her legs. “No.”

  “Then I will.” He threw himself back down on the mattress, tugged at the wrinkled bedding underneath him and rolled to his side, trying to ignore her. The golden brown eyes burned holes into him. Jack finally sat up. “Amber, it’s all right. Go back to bed.”

  “Would it help if you told me what you dreamed about?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “Usually I don’t dream and even if I did tell, it wouldn’t help.”

  “Then what will?”

  He remembered Claron. “Mordil,” he told her. “Can you find some?”

  Her nose wrinkled. “That’s bad stuff. You don’t want that.”

  “It’s what will help.”

  “I think you need a rehab tech.”

  “I’ve had one.” He stopped as Amber’s face wrinkled all over and she began to sniffle. He reached forward then, and tugged her over, keeping the blankets bunched up between them, but hugging her as well as he could. He smoothed her sleep-tangled hair and looked out into the hallway, his sight homing in on the beacon of light. “Listen. I’ll tell you what they told me. Coldsleep for military transports is different than storage or medical coldsleep. The government takes advantage of the time and programs in a debriefing suggestion. Brain waves, though minimal, are taped. Then they have a record of every participant’s memory of the action. It saves time later and it’s usually helpful. You wake up purged, more or less.”

  The sniffling quieted, but he could tell from the movement of her shoulders that she was still crying softly, while listening to him. “My transport was damaged by Thraks as it left Milos. Most of the support systems went down, we went off course and were lost—you know that. And you know my bay was knocked into auxiliary power and so I survived. Seventeen years, I survived. But all of those years, I dreamed.”

  Amber hiccoughed and interrupted. “But I dreamed too, at Madame Sadie’s, and they weren’t all bad dreams. Some were nice. I even remembered when I was little and my mother was still there.”

  “But I was programmed into the debriefing loop—all I could dream was the war. Over and over again.”

  “The same thing?”

  “Yes … and no. The mind still creates. Facts get stretched, bloated. Sometimes the detail is exact, and sometimes the mind is creating new out of old, until I wasn’t sure what I’d gone through and what I’d imagined. But always the Sand Wars.”

  She shuddered. “And then what?”

  “And then when they picked me up, it ended. But I still had problems. I wake up. They told me that was my mind’s reaction to all those years when I couldn’t wake up. And I forgot.”

  “Forgot what? The war?”

  “No. I forgot most of what I’d ever been before the war. My family. My life.”

  Amber pulled back from him and stared at him in the twilight. “You don’t remember your family?”

  “Not much. Sometimes, a momentary picture. They died on Dorman’s Stand when the Thraks took it, but they died inside me a long time before that.”

  “How sad!” She started to reach for him, but he caught her hand in midair.

  “I didn’t tell you that for pity.”

  “And I wasn’t giving you ’pity’.” Her lips curled at his rejection. She pulled her hand back and said, “I can probably find the mordil, if I have to.”

  “Good.” He watched as she flounced off the bed. “We’ll be going through this off and on, as long as I do work.”

  She grinned then, illuminated in the doorway, her hand on the handle before shutting it behind her. “I guess I won’t mind,” she said, “since you said ’we’.”

  Jack sat cross-legged on the living room floor, a tarp spread out in front of him, and the suit supine on the tarp. The tarp was a precaution to keep the floor clean if he decided to do some tinkering. No sense in upsetting the landlady. Sadie had done a lot for them. He frowned. There ought to be a way of isolating the organism and flushing it out of the system. He considered taking everything out he didn’t absolutely have to have for it to function … the repair kit, the chamois … He hated to take the chamois out, though—damn suit itched enough even with the soft cloth at his back.

  The phone rang, interrupting his intense concentration. “Hello,” he called. It went onto speaker automatically, and he caught Amber’s breathless tones.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m in trouble, Jack. Someone’s following me and I can’t shake him.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Picking up the mordil.” She gave him the location.

  “What’s he look like?”

  She quickly described Short-Jump to him. He grimaced, knowing that the vengeful mercenary had now tied Amber to him … and possibly brought Rolf in on it as well.

  “Does he know you’re on to him?”

  She made a rude noise. “I’m better than that!”

  “You used to be good enough not to get followed,”

  A sigh. “There is that.”

  “Stay there. I’ll get you out.”

  “But Jack—”

  “Why did you call if you didn’t want help?” He cut the connection before she could argue back. He got up, looking wistfully at the suit, repulsed and attracted by it. He was invulnerable in the suit. And conspicuous as hell walking down a city street. He walked past the suit and, instead, tucked the small plastic hand gun into his upper right thigh pants pocket where it scarcely bulged. He walked down to the line to catch a public car headed toward where Amber was trapped.

  She looked scared as he walked into the corner drugshop. He thought for a moment that the independent, street-tough kid had fled, replaced by a scared, clinging girl-woman, but then Amber straightened and he saw the old determination.

  “I didn’t call you for help,” she lectured him as he joined her at the counter. “I just wanted you to know what I was up to.” “Too late now. Get the mordil?”

  “Yeah. He insisted on patching into the doctor’s master system to verify the prescription.” She sucked her even, white front teeth. “Good thing I put the entry in this morning.” “What’s the best way out of here?” “The front. Unless you want
to go in back with the pharmacist.” She grinned, suddenly. “He’s been hinting at me.”

  The thought made him, already angry at Short-Jump, angrier at everybody in general. He took her by the elbow. “We’ll go out the front. If Short-Jump wants me, he’ll try to take me there.” She nodded as he added, “You hit the deck.”

  They stepped onto the sidewalk. Laser fire streaked past Jack’s face and he shoved Amber to one side, but she let out a tiny squeak and clung to his arm. As Jack swung around, he saw the man who’d frozen her in terror.

  His instincts were right—Rolf awaited them as well. He and three of his men closed the semicircle with Short-Jump.

  Jack reacted blindly. He pulled the gun and snapped off three quick shots, pivoting before his targets fell. Short-Jump hit him in the chest with a stunner. Jolted, he pitched back into Amber, feeling his muscles let go as he sagged to the concrete, unable to help himself, though he was still conscious. Short-Jump’s face flared in surprise.

  Amber whirled on Rolf, her face snarling. “Don’t you touch him!”

  “I don’t want him, little one. Just you,” said Rolf calmly. His hard black eyes glittered as he looked down at Jack, who rolled helplessly on the pavement, trying to collect himself. The man was dressed well, his brown hair combed in wings, silk shirt drawn tightly over his bulging biceps, his waspish waist cinched into expensive pants. He drew back a boot tip and kicked Jack lightly in the ribs. “He won’t be bothering you any more.” With a proprietary gesture, he reached for Amber. “Our deal’s finished,” he told Short-Jump.

  “I won’t go with you!” Amber stood, cornered, over Jack’s body.

  Rolf shook his head. “I thought I taught you never to get involved in your work,” he commented and reached again, this time determined not to be denied.

  Jack shook his head. Pins and needles flared painfully through his body, but even as he jerked uncontrollably, he knew he had the stunner beat—he should be limply unconscious, and he was gaining control back in flashes. But not soon enough to protect Amber from Rolf, as the man reached out and grabbed her, jerking her from her protective stance over his body.

  Amber let out a sound and even Jack felt the flare of energy. His brain seemed to explode with pain.

  Rolf made a small grunt and collapsed to the sidewalk, to his knees, expensive pants splitting at the thigh seam. He clutched his head. “Don’t, Amber! Don’t do it!” he ground out. Then he sagged into himself and fell over on the sidewalk. A thin trickle of blood seeped from one, hairy, flared nostril.

  Jack regained control and caught Amber as she collapsed. He staggered to his feet, as Short-Jump unfroze from the spectacle in time to face him, his arms full of Amber.

  “Shit,” the mercenary said. His beady eyes had widened in shock “I’ve never seen anything like this.” He looked down at the pimp’s body and they watched Rolf’s chest heave in and out in tortured breath. “What did she do to him?” “Nothing. He had a heart attack. Let us pass, Short-Jump.”

  The ugly man’s face twisted as he spat out. “You killed Marciane.”

  “Kill or be killed. You know what he did to us… he let all of us be drugged and then dumped out there, just to get me and my suit. He let all of you be dumped—just to get me.”

  “Th’ captain had his faults.” Short-Jump brought his stunner up again, but he looked as though he’d lost faith in it.

  “That won’t work on me,” Jack told him. “It didn’t the first time and it won’t this time.” Though, truthfully, as his weak knees began to quiver, he wondered if Short-Jump hadn’t won after all.

  His opponent wavered. “Holy shit,” he said again. “I never seen a man beat a stunner before.”

  “I’ve got good reflexes. Let me by, Short-Jump! You know I killed Marciane in self-defense, and it was his own greed brought him to it.”

  “Aye,” said the man suddenly, with a heavy sigh, as he dropped the stunner. “I know it. We’re quits, Storm, though I can’t vouch for the rest of the crew. But I just want you to remember, it wasn’t the greed. The suit drove him crazy. He thought you dishonored it. It was in him like a woman, a lover, something he wanted and could never have and could never forget—that’s why he did what he did.”

  Jack shifted Amber’s weight in his arms and smiled at the poet hidden in the rough, homely man. “I think I understand.” He brushed past Short-Jump and began to run down the street as a crowd started to gather, and Rolf let out an anguished groan.

  Amber moaned and her eyelids flickered. The dead, pale white of her skin began to show a little color again, as he took the dampened cloth off her face. She sat up.

  “How are you feeling?”

  She turned away from him and violently vomited off the side of the bed. He’d thrown the blanket there when he’d laid her down. She grabbed the washcloth from Jack and pressed it tightly to her mouth. Unhappily, Jack gathered the blanket up and took it into the bathroom, where he fed it to the Disposall.

  Amber called out faintly, “I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it. Next time, give me a warning.”

  “I will.”

  He came back in, drying his hands. As she looked up at him, the whites of her eyes showed again, and he grabbed her by the shoulders, afraid she was going under again.

  Uncried tears sparkled brightly in her eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “I killed him!”

  “No, he was alive when we left.”

  “He was?” Amber unknowingly wrung the washcloth between her hands. “I tried to … then I found out what I was doing and I—I tried to undo it.”

  Jack helped her sit back and bolstered her up with a pillow. “Just what was it you did?” His own head still throbbed. He’d thought of taking the mordil for the ache, but wanted to be awake when Amber came around.

  “But I could have.” She shook her head. “All the time I thought Rolf had killed those men, and told me I’d done it, and then planted the evidence so I’d be framed. I was so sure … I’d blacked out every time. I knew … I knew I couldn’t have killed them.”

  “Amber, what was it you did?” he repeated wearily.

  She looked at him fully. “Jack, I pushed at him with my mind. I thought that I wanted him dead. And then he began to die. Oh, frack it!” She slapped her fist into the mattress. “I can kill with my mind! No wonder he doesn’t want to let me go. What has he done to me?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know where you’ll be safe.” Jack left the room abruptly and went to the small screen computer terminal. He fed in enough credits to activate it and began typing out the access code when Amber staggered over to stand, leaning on his shoulder.

  The video scrambled as the call began to go through channels.

  “Jack, don’t do this. They were going to come looking for us last time.”

  “They didn’t know who was calling last time.”

  She placed a trembling hand on his shoulder. “And who’s going to be calling this time?”

  “The last remaining true Knight, to quote Ballard.” The computer paused to query him, and his fingers stayed over the keys, hesitating a second. Then, just as he should have responded, the screen flared to life, and Jack found himself face to face with the officer who’d denied his men the right to life on Milos.

  The man frowned. “Turn your screen on and identify yourself. This is a restricted access channel.”

  Jack opened his mouth, but Amber started, and she reached over and hit the cutoff button rapidly, shutting the system down.

  “What the hell?”

  Her face had paled again, but she stood firm under his outrage. “Didn’t you seen that band of interference across the top of the screen? They were setting up tracers again. We don’t want the World Police here. You don’t want to see the Triad here.”

  “But this is the Dominion…”

  “Don’t be so green! There’s more corruption here than anywhere.” Amber perched on the desk top. She shook her head. “You must ha
ve been a farm boy before you went into the infantry. I don’t know who or what that access code leads to, but it’s no recruiting office! Any slag can tell that.”

  He flushed and pushed himself away from the terminal. “So it takes a guttersnipe to protect me from myself.”

  “Yeah—and it takes a white knight in shining armor to protect me from myself,” Amber bandied back. “Heaven help us both.”

  Chapter 14

  I don’t think you should use the suit this time,” Amber stated, with a slight frown. She nibbled at a cuticle while waiting for Jack’s reply.

  He paused in mid-struggle to open the seams as it lay on the floor of the apartment. “That’s what they hired me for. Blame Sadie, not me. The recommendation came from her, and we can use the money.”

  She knelt by the suit. “I’m not trying to blame anyone. But I can feel the vibrations without even touching it, and they’re strong. Jack, why didn’t you tell me the refrigeration didn’t work at all?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure.”

  “Well, be sure now.” She set her shoulders, and a stubborn expression clouded her triangular face. “Besides, I don’t want to do that any more.”

  Jack felt exasperation nudging at him and sat back on his heels. “I didn’t ask you to kill it.”

  “I couldn’t anyway—I can’t get a grip on it.” She tossed her head back and angry blue eyes locked with her amber-brown ones. “I don’t want to do that.”

  He flipped a sleeve over, angrily, and it flopped into the chest of the suit, as though it beat itself. “That,” he said, “is something you were born with. You can’t shut it out.”

  “I can try.”

  “You’d be better off learning how to control it.”