— CHAPTER 30 —
Propelled by Caccamo, I walked side by side with Silky into a grassy channel between two rocky mounds that I realized were concealed guard posts. The calls of angry gaibolga gulls echoed off the cliff walls below, and waves lapped against rocks at their base as the tide advanced.
“Oh, good. I spy my least favorite new arrival in the city, Mr. McCall and his alien bride.”
“Come to arrest some more males to tickle your fancy, Rachel?” I answered the police captain who had appeared at the channel’s exit, flanked by two humans in the dark green uniform of the provincial police. I didn’t recognize these two from my visit to the station house. I think her new helpers were more likely to spend their days at the monastery.
Captain Silverberg glared at me, so I added, “If you can’t wait to take us back to your office, do you want me to strip off now? If you ask nicely, Silky can lend you a ribbon.”
If Silverberg’s glare was an act, she was damned convincing. Caccamo regarded me with a new respect. I could tell he wanted to join in, but I was too tired to banter. I shook my head, and trudged out the channel and into the bowl-shaped depression it fed into. I guess it was designed to conceal ingress and egress to what had been a military facility, but now that depression was rimmed with people in police uniforms corralling the HUB, Leveler, and Revenge Squad groups. Everyone protested their innocence vigorously.
Three police GX-cannon pointed down into the depression. Except, the police had no access to such heavy weapons. I noted the black tape stuck onto the breech blocks, and knew that Revenge Squad logos were hidden underneath. Seeing the contents of our armory out on loan reminded me.
“Boss!” I said.
Silky and Caccamo looked round.
“Big Boss,” I clarified. “When we showed up at HQ and no one was home, we just walked in and helped ourselves.”
“Of course,” Caccamo replied. “Organizing security is such a pain in the butt, and why bother? Who would be stupid enough to pilfer from a Revenge Squad facility?”
“But Zhakar-Ree tortured you to reveal the access codes.”
“Because I told her the place was wired with enough booby traps to wipe out half this sorry pack of Levelers. And if a man is willing to die to protect something then it stands to reason that something must be valuable indeed.”
I shook my head. “Why, you crafty old bastard.”
“Thank you, Acting Auxiliary McCall. And that’s why I’m the boss. The big boss. Now, let’s sort matters out with the nice police lady, and get back to the Slaughterhouse. The Leveler boss got one thing right. I do have quarterly profit targets to deliver, and I’m not going to do that standing around chatting at the seaside, however pleasant … the first thing… next few weeks…”
Did he just say the Slaughterhouse? asked Bahati. How come we never had such cool names for places while I was still alive?
I didn’t know. I could hear Caccamo talking but I couldn’t keep track of the words. He sounded as mad as a Hardit on heat. I would enjoy getting to know him. Later.
I found I had drifted up above the bowl, and was shuffling weary legs toward a spur of ceramalloy sticking incongruously out of the clifftop, nestled in weeds.
The horizon drew in on my world. Silky was alive, well, and as impossible as always. My ghosts were with me. That was all I knew.
The spur was shoulder height. I guessed it was a relic of an observation post, the rest of which had long since been blasted into oblivion.
The noise from the crowds of arrested people went quiet. I felt Silky’s mind in my own, sensed her watchful concern.
I tried to remember the questions I needed to ask Silky about the memory recording she’d made for me. There had been something vital, but I couldn’t remember what that was. I slumped down, noticing on my descent that animals were using the ruined post as a clifftop restroom facility.
My bone-weary body cared not a jot.
I needed rest. So did my ghosts.
I closed my eyes and left the concerns of this world to others while I slept. We had nothing left to give.
— CHAPTER 31 —
Six months later
The pilot tugs guiding the cargo ship into the bay sounded their horns, scattering the dung whales feasting on the effluent flow to the north of Coffman Wharf.
Must be a Littorane crew, I decided. Not that their race bothered me. I was beginning to grow accustomed to the cosmopolitan nature of the port, and my push toward tolerance of alien diversity included the squat, amphibian Littoranes, with their tails that had a habit of bashing into decent folk, and their love of all natural creatures of the sea (whether inside the water, or on a plate). Most of all, I was grateful that the horn blasts would shut up the ever noisy gaibolga gulls for a few moments of respite.
I glanced at the police officer who sat across the table from Silky and me. Rachel Silverberg was building up a head of steam to tell us something awkward.
I was happy to wait. The sun was smiling down upon the terrace outside Kaduna’s Café on H’Sien Dock. I don’t have many good things to say about the planet of Klin-Tula, but I’ll admit its sun can bathe you in a pleasant warmth without sneakily killing you with high-energy particles.
Besides, we had coffee. And artisan bread. These are not luxuries that encourage haste.
Compared with the alternative of stunning us when we least expected and finding ourselves waking up in an interrogation cell, Kaduna’s Café was a definite step up. Silverberg probably summoned us here because the coffee was even better than police coffee. More expensive too, but then Revenge Squad was paying. Nonetheless, now I had explained to Silky that our asses belonged to this woman, we knew we had no choice but to be here.
“Zhakar-Ree was released without charge this morning,” said Silverberg. Her gaze moved directly from her fluted coffee cup to the ship in the bay, taking care to avoid meeting our eyes en route.
“The magistrate’s office threw out the charges due to evidence corruption. There was no such thing, of course. We carried out every detail of the operation with meticulous care. Zhakar-Ree has connections and I do not.”
The news wasn’t a surprise, but came as a blow all the same. It had been six months since that eventful day on the beach. At first, Silverberg had been a blur of energy, unwilling to waste a single second in her eagerness to pursue the Levelers, and their dreams of insurrection, while they were caught off balance by the arrests at the HUB base.
But as every day passed, it became more obvious even to us that she was uncovering connections that sank deeper and broader into places only the bravest law officer would delve.
Rachel Silverberg did so delve. She must have known this would be the result, but I guess she was that rarest of police officials on this planet. Someone who wanted to reveal the truth, no matter what it cost her. An honest cop. Yet one who blackmailed us all the same, because she saw us as criminal scum who did not deserve to be treated with decency.
Silverberg finally looked me in the eye and I felt a twinge of sympathy despite how she’d used us. I glimpsed the look of someone who had seen too much and had lost the ability to care. I’d seen that expression in the mirror countless times.
“They’re about to demote me for irregularities. I’ll be Lieutenant Silverberg next we meet. Irregularities. There are no specific accusations, just insinuation. They don’t want to give details because they would lead right back to those in power. It’s up to me to complain about my demotion, and if I do–”
“A knife will slip between your ribs,” I said.
A little life returned to her eyes. “I’m not like you, Mr. McCall. I wasn’t born a slave expecting my life to be cut short by the claws of Jotun officers, or slaughtered as low-grade plasma fodder in someone else’s war. I grew up in a society where we had a right to life, and I want the same for the citizens of Port Zahir. If I die unremarked in some city gutter, then I can do nothing to protect those who deserve a life not lived in fear.”<
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“I share your aims,” I said. “You do realize that we are on the same side?”
She snorted.
“What? You’re still saying we are the bad guys?”
“Of course you are. You’re just amongst the least worst of the players. I still want you ground into the dirt, and the name of Revenge Squad cursed by every tongue in town for the parasites you are.”
“You have no need to fear me,” Silky told Silverberg.
A question formed on my lips but Sanaa shocked me into silence with that fake electric charge she reserved for special occasions. They need to play this out, she told me.
Like the Pavnix and the HUB leader? I teased. Trial by testosterone, is that what this is? You’re such a sexist twonk, Sanaa. Always were.
Please be quiet, both of you, urged Efia. Stay alert but silent. Sanaa is right. Let them sort it out.
I was happy to. Doubly so because after I ripped out Bahati’s AI casing, and Sanaa gave her revelation about our dead child, it had taken months for my ghosts to settle back into their natural state of gentle chiding.
In unfortunate synchronicity, I folded my arms at the exact same time as the newly demoted police officer and waited for Silky to explain why in her little alien head, she thought the police woman could possibly fear her.
“You fear me as a mind reader,” said Silky. “You worry that you can hold no secrets from the Kurlei. You are correct in that. As I become more attuned to your species, my talent grows. Let me demonstrate.” She closed her eyes, which seemed to disappear inside their dark wells. “Lieutenant Silverberg, you currently feel resentment towards the two of us within a swirling mass of other strong emotions. Deep down you would like to befriend and admire us. If only you could, then we might be the allies outside the system that you so desperately crave. But you cannot because of our affiliation to Revenge Squad. We helped pull the scales from your eyes to see the full extent of corruption around you. For this you both hate and admire us. I see this clearly, but NJ does not. He is a worn-out old Marine, barely the right side of sanity and in terminal decline with no more than a few years of usefulness ahead of him.”
The police lieutenant frowned at me and raised a querying eyebrow.
I shrugged and raised my palms. “You think this is bad?” I remarked. “She’s sugar coating for your benefit. Besides, I get far harsher character assessments inside my head.”
We sugarcoat too, teased Bahati. I hoped she was teasing, anyway.
“Your point?” Silverberg snapped at Silky.
“You understand NJ’s type. That’s why you only talk to him, never me. You think he’s easier to manipulate. In doing so, you are wasting your time and insulting all three of us. Ndeki Joshua McCall is under my protection.”
Silverberg looked again at me for my reaction. She didn’t get one. Silky had my back and I had hers. That was the most natural thing in the world.
“The Levelers have infiltrated the CDF,” continued Silky. “You were demoted. The politicians are so corrupt they don’t bother to hide it. We’ve told you… what we know about other things…”
I winked at the police officer. Silky didn’t want to say in public that we were informing on Revenge Squad, although we hadn’t much to report so far.
“You cannot afford to hold scruples about who you associate with,” Silky continued. “Neither can we. So stop treating us as criminals and use us for what we are: your allies of necessity. You have something to say that you feel will drive a wedge between you and us. Speak now.”
Silverberg held up her hands in defeat. “Yeah. What the freaky alien girl says.” She shot me a conspiratorial glance. “You have my sympathies, McCall, if she’s always like this.”
“It’s a tough job,” I admitted, “but someone has to watch out for her.”
Silverberg almost smiled. “Look, I admit that I do feel a very slight and wholly undeserved fondness for you two, but you are most definitely playing for the wrong team. I may have been demoted but I had the sense to keep my hold over you safe and secure. Nothing has changed. You two are still my bitches.” She studied Silky with more openness than usual.
“Your record is as safe as it could possibly be,” Silverberg told her, “but you had better pray that knife NJ mentioned never slips between my ribs. Whether the hand wielding the blade is yours, a Leveler’s, an assassin hired by a crooked counselor, or a random street punk, if I die in suspicious circumstances, the truth about you will be released.”
Tension released in my shoulders and I took a bite from my seaweed bread soaked in faux-olive dressing. Silverberg didn’t need to spell out the details for any passing spy microphones. Silky deserted for a good reason – not because she chose to abandon her comrades – but there are no mitigating circumstances for desertion in the eyes of the law.
“For frakk’s sake, Rachel,” I said. “I thought you were going to tell us something we couldn’t have guessed for ourselves. You’ve got to stop scaring me like that. Don’t you realize I’m a worn-out old man in terminal decline?”
I looked out into the bay. I could grow to like it here. As if in response, a pair of dung whales, who had been performing a courtship dance below us, neared the surface and fountained pheromone-rich water out their blowholes. We placed our hands over our cups in ample time before the musky water rained down on the terrace.
When the whales dived for another turn, I picked up the pot of coffee, but found it held little weight. “We’ve a case this afternoon,” I said. “Littorane sects with religious differences. We – ah – paid out the first part of the policy last week, and this afternoon we’ll give the side we don’t like a follow-up visit. Nothing too violent. Just an unfriendly chat.”
“Your point, McCall?”
“That’s my schedule for this afternoon, Lieutenant. For the rest of the morning I’ve nowhere to be but here, and Port Zahir doesn’t get much better than sitting in the sun watching sex-crazed dung whales at H’Sien Dock. Who’s for another pot of coffee?”
FOLLOW NJ McCALL IN REVENGE SQUAD
REVENGE SQUAD Book2: SECOND STRIKE
It was supposed to be just another job: trash the cargo of a shipping line that had been messing with a Revenge Squad client. Honestly, I hadn’t meant to blow the ship sky high. And when it transpired that the ship was owned by the most powerful man in Port Zahir, and that he blamed us for the damage he’d suffered, it was Revenge Squad’s turn to face revenge.
My name is NJ McCall, and this is the story of how I helped to tear Port Zahir apart, and then tried to stitch it back together… with mixed results. It’s about dark obsessions, corruption in high places, killer droids with attitude, and a city coming apart along racial lines. Along the way, I sing for my life, develop an inappropriate attraction to several civil officials, am recruited by a Legion spy, and get close and personal to a perverted statue.
But most of all, it’s about finding a new family amongst the most unexpected people I could imagine: aliens.
BONUS NOVELETTE: DAMAGE UNLIMITED
Set in the Naddox Archipelago, some 800 miles from his Revenge Squad base at Port Zahir (and where the gun laws are considerably laxer!), a forestry client activates their revenge clause when an unknown assailant slaughters every living thing at a remote logging site. The forest around here is an extremely dangerous place to be, but so too is NJ McCall. Some battles, though, can’t be won by GX-Cannon and railguns alone…
This story is a novelette (about an hour to read) and is set between ‘Hurt U Back’ and ‘Second Strike’, but works as an introductory self-contained story.
At the time of writing, this novelette is available exclusively for signed up Legionaries. Receive the Legion Bulletin (featuring NJ’s column, Ndeki’s Notes), enroll in swag competitions, and download a free starter library, including Damage Unlimited. Enlist today.
The Prequel
2762AD. My name is NJ McCall, and this is my story of how a faded old soldier wound up clearing the deranged str
eets of Port Zahir in the employ of the planet’s premier paramilitary retribution service.
It’s a story of redemption, or learning to trust the ghosts in my head, of stumbling across a narrow path out of the Human Legion that didn’t end with me dead in a gutter.
But most of all, it’s about why I can’t stand aliens. Especially when they save me from myself.
After War is a dark, feature-length novel of how NJ joined Revenge Squad. It is available now.
Hurt U Back Page 17
