Jack Four

by Neal Asher

  ‘I’m still here!’ he shouted happily.

  I glanced back to see him charge up opposite and start pulling out boxes. I scrambled through, fell out into the next aisle and ran along it. By now the feeling had returned to my arm. I flexed it, flexed my hand and ran into a room with short rows of goods. Here was the hardware. Round a turning, then another. Hand tools. Heavy wrenches, deposition welders, spanner and screwdriver sets, but nothing in the way of laser cutters or atomic shears. I picked up a wrench, my breathing settling as he tramped along the next aisle. Spotting something else, I gently put the wrench down and picked up an axe. The handle was duralumin and the head ceramal. Walking to the end of the aisle, I understood that such tools were available because those who came here often had old ships, or occupied primitive locations, where old technology had to be persuaded with brute force. I rounded the end of the aisle with the axe already swinging.

  Brack looked briefly startled. I’d timed it just right. The axe slammed down on top of his pulse rifle, cracking the casing and shorting something inside so it showered sparks. Yet he still held the thing with rigid strength. I stepped back for another swing when the busted rifle hit me in the chest and sent me staggering.

  ‘I didn’t want to use it anyway,’ he said, drawing his machete again.

  He stepped in, stooping low and swinging at my legs, still seeking to disable and not kill. I jumped, kicked, driving a foot into his face and pushing away to come down into a squat. I swung at his legs as he came at me, getting in one good hit where I’d directed my earlier pulse gun shots. He staggered and winced, his visor snapping shut, and swung at my head. I simply ducked it and, squatting on one leg, sweep-kicked his ankle. He staggered again, but was too strong and heavy to go over. I came up, grabbed a shelf and pulled it over on him. He clambered out of the debris only to get my axe in the top of his helmet. It glanced away but I could see it jarred him. He looked angry now. He kept swinging at me and missing and didn’t like that. Axe and machete clashed in a fast exchange, but seeing the deep cuts in the axe shaft I knew it couldn’t last. His visor opened again.

  ‘Prador metal,’ he said, holding up the machete. ‘Yours will break soon, then we’ll see if you can dance without legs.’

  Always the same, this thing with the visors. They all wore armour, just as I had, but kept opening up that hatch to the most vulnerable part of their bodies. It had been Frey’s undoing when I shoved that grenade into his helmet. I noted my breathing was slow and even. I’d hoped to cause him some damage through what I’d already inflicted on his armour with the pulse gun, but that was too slow. If he got hold of me just once, or got in one hit with that blade, I was done.

  I stepped in and swung at his chest. He blocked with the machete. I swung again and again and he blocked every time. I guess he assumed me that inept. The axe handle now looked close to giving up. Assuming a look of fear and defeat, I held it out before me to, supposedly, keep him back. He grinned and brought the machete down hard. With a high loud ring, a short length of the shaft and the axe head fell away. He grinned, and I drove the jagged shaft right at his face. I could have gone for one of his eyes but he would have closed his visor and, though hurt, would be all but invulnerable again. The jagged shaft struck his cheekbone and slid deep into his helmet beside his face, ripping through skin and flesh. His visor tried to close, but instead clamped the shaft. My fingers followed through, forefinger and mid-finger in one eye and the other two in the other. Hard, right down into the sockets. I hooked them and pulled, and he screamed.

  Shaking the fleshy detritus of his eyes from my fingers, I stepped away as he swung his machete. He swung again and again. Blind. Pulling a case from one shelf, I tore it open and pulled out a memory metal screwdriver. On the handle were the controls that set the kind of head it switched to, but they were irrelevant, for all I needed was the long length of metal and a suitable grip. He realized his danger and reached up to grab at the axe handle, just as I thrust-kicked the back of his knee with all the force I could muster. Going down on one knee, he turned and swiped, but I’d moved to one side by then. Another kick to his chest put him on his back. I followed him down, within the swing of his blade and, two-handed, stabbed the screwdriver into his eye socket. The machete clanged away and he closed his arms around me, trying to crush me. I bore down on the screwdriver as his arms began to bend my back and my ribs felt as though they were about to break. The driver sank with a crunch right to the back of his skull, but still it seemed he would break me. He released his hold and hit my arm – I heard the bone break. But, still holding with the other hand, I wrenched the screwdriver from side to side, stirring its shaft in his brains. He made a wet snorting sound, blood and brain tissue coming out of his nose, and the pressure came off.

  It took me a moment to free myself from his arms and finally stand, shaking and nauseated. My arm was definitely busted and my ribs didn’t feel in much better shape. I stared down at him as he jerked a few more times, or perhaps that was some remaining function of his suit.

  ‘I wondered when you were going to stop playing with him.’

  Marcus crouched up on top of a nearby shelf. He dropped down to land lightly in a squat and then stand. Blood spattered his envirosuit and he now carried a selection of weapons. The other two had obviously found him. Unlucky for them.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s get him out of his suit.’

  * * *

  ‘They’re abandoning it,’ said Marcus, his voice not like his at all.

  The window could be adjusted to show sensor data from any of the telescopes and other sensors positioned along the dock. It showed prador strewn between the Stratogaster space station and the distant reavers. I also noticed some heading this way and felt that didn’t bode well for us.

  ‘Vrasan has given up,’ I suggested.

  ‘The Hamilton AI says so,’ he replied. ‘And neither side will let the other get their hands or claws on those hooders.’

  I nodded, then wished I hadn’t because it felt as if Brack had cracked something in my neck too. We moved on from the viewing section which sat between the docking areas and airlocks and on up the tunnel of the dock.

  Whether it had been his plan all along to make an approach like this, I didn’t know, nor whether my presence was unnecessary. Had he watched the final moments of my fight with Brack or only just arrived as I finished it? I liked to think he would’ve intervened had he arrived earlier, but just wasn’t sure. He prodded me with the stun baton and I stumbled. This kind of behaviour would be expected from Brack by the two guards who were standing behind the six-legged drone in the tunnel.

  As we drew closer, the drone targeted us, but at a snapped command from one of the guards, it returned the focus of its impressive array of weapons to the tunnel lying behind us. I glanced back at Marcus. He had his visor closed and had smeared it, and the suit, with blood and other messy exudates. To add to the effect, he’d introduced a couple of malfunctions, so occasional sparks issued from one leg and smoke wisped from other joints. I hoped these distractions worked, because I had no confidence in the sidearm in the sling supporting my arm.

  ‘Jeset and Dragim?’ one of the two asked.

  ‘The other one got them,’ Marcus replied. ‘Jeset stuck a mine on him.’

  He’d explained to me that the one called Jeset had actually tried that, before Marcus broke his neck. He’d then laid out his simple plan, while adjusting the voice output of Brack’s suit based on some of the recordings it contained. Now, with a lot of crackling interference, his voice matched Brack’s. We walked straight past the drone to where an airlock stood open. Just beyond it, a loading ramp reached from an open hold door onto the dock. At the foot of this lay three bodies clad in grey shipsuits pulled over a variety of clothing. With her own ship damaged, Suzeal had taken another. I guessed them to be the previous crew of this ship and that others in a similar condition would be inside. I wondered how many more of Suzeal’s soldiers would be in there too. It hadn�
�t been something we’d discussed. As we reached the airlock, the ramp began to retract. Marcus halted and turned to the other two.

  ‘Over here,’ he said, giving me another prod so I stumbled into the airlock. The inner door stood open, with a body sprawled beyond. I was right about the crew. I looked back around as the two sauntered over. When they drew close, completely oblivious to their danger, Marcus snapped a hand out and grabbed the lower rim of the nearest one’s helmet, while simultaneously shooting the other in the face. As the second man staggered back, his face a burned ruin, the first hit the wall beside the airlock. Marcus closed in and drove a fist into his now-closed visor. The thing smashed back into his face and the man slid bonelessly to the floor. Some suits were better than others, it appeared. The drone began to turn, but by then Marcus had entered the airlock and closed the outer door.

  ‘Here.’ He handed me the laser carbine he’d taken from Jeset. I held it one-handed but didn’t think I’d be much use with it. Besides the crew, who were likely all dead, I was the only one without armour. Marcus opened his visor and marched up the corridor.

  ‘Suzeal just asked me what happened out there,’ he said. ‘I began to tell her about a drone malfunction, then my com, which hasn’t been good since the fight, broke down.’

  Was it really going to be as easy as this?

  He continued along a corridor which presumably led to the bridge. A soldier stepped out of the door ahead of us, hesitated for a second, then spotted my carbine. He began to raise one of his own but I fired, flaming the front of his suit. Marcus’s shots hit next, dancing him back along the corridor. A hand reached out and shoved me, making me fall through a doorway as pulse gun fire filled the corridor from behind. Marcus turned, shots sizzling on his armour, and launched grenades back towards those shots, then followed after them at a run. I pulled myself up and peered round the door jamb to see him barrelling into three of Suzeal’s soldiers. They were all just rising, the grenades not enough to penetrate their armour. Grabbing the first one by the neck, he used her as a shield as he continued into the other two, and then threw her at them. He chopped the side of the head of one without a helmet, deforming his skull and snapping his neck. The woman struggled to rise with her back against the wall. He slammed the barrel of his weapon into her visor and kept on firing till it collapsed, meanwhile back-kicking the other soldier into the other wall.

  Movement behind. I turned to see the one we’d first shot climbing to his feet so I fired on him, and just kept firing. I couldn’t afford to let him get a shot off at me. He collapsed in flames, then some power supply blew in the side of his suit, throwing smoking guts up the wall. I turned again. Marcus had dropped his weapon and had his remaining opponent up in the air by his throat. That soldier drew a sidearm and fired into his chest. Marcus flung him face down on the floor, came down on his back with one knee, grabbed his arms and heaved. I don’t know whether the horrible crunching issued from his armour or breaking back, but he folded up midway, the armour parting underneath, then lay there jerking when dropped. Marcus was a killing machine.

  A shot hit my shoulder, spinning me round. I came down on one knee and opened fire. Five soldiers had now appeared from the bridge and I kept firing, even as I flung myself back through the doorway. Weaponless and roaring, Marcus hurtled past straight into the fusillade. The firing dropped away when he arrived and I heard yells, screams and the thump of bodies hitting the walls as I inspected my shoulder. The shot had penetrated my envirosuit and dug a lump of flesh out of my shoulder, while simultaneously cauterizing the wound. It wasn’t too deep but hurt like hell. Then again, there weren’t many parts of my body that didn’t hurt, my broken arm especially. This brief pause gave me time to take in the contents of the room. Two cold coffins sat in a framework with feed and power lines extending to the walls. I quickly stepped over and peered in the viewing window of one. A woman lay inside, thin and blue. Her shaven head revealed a line where her skin, and probably the underlying skull, had either been glued or had healed together. I ducked back to the door and looked round the jamb into the corridor again.

  One of the soldiers lay on the floor, legs bent away at the hips at an angle they should not have been able to achieve. Another tumbled head over heels in my direction and landed on his back, tried to rise and then slumped. I aimed at the others, trying to get a clear shot, but couldn’t really manage it one-handed. Marcus then grabbed the helmets of the remaining two, heaved them both from the floor and slammed them together. A visor and pieces of segmented armour tumbled away. He stood there, his helmet, and plates of Brack’s armour hanging loose, smoke rising from underlying flesh, clenching and unclenching his hands with a clicking, crunching sound.

  ‘Where ish she!’ he shouted at the five who, even if they were alive, showed no inclination to answer. In irritation he tore away his loose plates and shed the damaged gauntlets.

  I walked out, worried about his slurring voice. He focused on me, took a step forwards and for a second looked puzzled, then grimaced and turned to head up the corridor.

  ‘Where ish she?’ he hissed.

  I entered the bridge behind him to see a very frightened man sitting in an acceleration chair, spun round from the navcom. Marcus loomed over him, hands still clenching and unclenching. I took in the scene. The man wore a shipsuit just like those I’d seen on the corpses of the crewmembers. He also couldn’t get out of the chair because someone had wound a band of reinforced tape around him and the chair.

  ‘Marcus!’ I moved up behind him quickly and, using the carbine, tried to push him to one side. It was like trying to move a tree. He whirled towards me, teeth bared in a snarl, but at least they were human teeth – the change never that quick. He grabbed my weapon and sent it crashing into a nearby wall. Then he just stopped, head tilted to one side as he looked at the weapon. After a moment, he stepped away from the acceleration chair, gesturing me towards the man.

  ‘Do you have anything here I can cut that tape with?’ I asked.

  The man nodded gratefully and pointed over to wall storage. Stepping over, I opened a hatch and slid out a tool chest. From this I took some diamond-faced snips and cut through the tape. He pulled it away and stood, then looked over to Marcus.

  ‘The bitch is in the hold,’ he spat.

  Marcus was gone in a moment, hurtling back down the corridor, leaving chunks of armour behind him. The man went over to another storage hatch, put his hand against a palm lock, then pulled it open to reveal three racked slammers. He pulled one out angrily.

  ‘She killed them,’ he said. ‘She didn’t need to kill them.’

  ‘Wait.’ I caught his arm as he moved to go after Marcus.

  ‘She fucking killed them!’

  I glanced over at my carbine and saw a definite bend to it as well as the energy canister lying to one side, so snatched up one of the slammers. The short weapon seemed apt for one-handed use, but the kick might be difficult.

  ‘We’ll follow,’ I said, ‘slow and careful. Best not to get in Marcus’s way.’

  ‘He’s a hooper,’ said the man.

  I thought about Marcus as he’d been when hunting me down. He might have lost most of the visible signs of his mutation but he still retained a hideous portion of that strength. And now he had something else: a mad rage I’d never seen before.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘something like that.’

  As we moved down the corridor after Marcus, deep thumps transmitted through the dock and into the ship. From above came a metallic clattering, which then proceeded away from us.

  ‘They’re back,’ said the crewman.

  I didn’t need any further explanation.

  Gunfire echoed ahead then ended with a long wailing scream. More shots ensued, followed by crashes and thumps. My companion paused by one of his crew, turned her over and looked at the hole drilled through her forehead. He stood again, tears in his eyes.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Galash,’ he said woodenl
y.

  ‘Why are you here, Galash?’

  ‘Trade,’ he said tersely, but I saw the brief shift in his expression. I thought about the two cold coffins I’d seen earlier. The short stock of my slammer hit him hard in the temple and he dropped to the floor. Gazing down at him, I contemplated a killing shot.

  ‘Get another job,’ I said instead and departed. Even while walking away, I wondered if really I should have killed him. Anyone who traded in thralled human blanks was either a murderer or an accomplice to murder. Yet, it seemed the Graveyard contained so many scumbags like that and I couldn’t kill them all, could I?

  The ship had become an abattoir. I passed the detritus of Marcus’s passage, checking for life signs and finding them either fading or non-existent. A short spiral stair took me down; halfway I had to move a body out of the way that was near torn in two. Through smoke, stepping over ugly remains of humanity along a path that was easy to follow, I finally came to the racket of gunfire and hot splinters flying out of the hold. I paused outside the open airlock then, once the firing had ceased, risked a quick glance inside.

  The hold contained a cargo of large plasmel boxes, many of which had been shredded by gunfire. Marcus crouched behind a stack of these. The reason for his sober retreat had begun to climb the ramp. The drone had all its weapons directed into the hold, and I jerked back, even as heavy slugs smashed and zinged through the airlock. Then the firing ceased again.

  ‘She’s run,’ Marcus growled.

  I eyed the control panel beside the airlock, rested the slammer against the wall, then pulled up its menu, searching through until I found what I wanted.