War Machine (The Combat-K Series)

by Andy Remic

  Vitch gave a deep sigh and closed her eyes in the moment of total physical satisfaction. She allowed the COMBO bed to massage her with nano-electric insertions.

  Mr. Max, she thought, and shivered; a little in delight, a little in memory of his touch, a little in fear. She had known him for fifteen years, and yet he was still deliciously unpredictable. Twice he had tried to kill her, and twice she had bought him. A mercenary to the core, money was the only currency he worshipped: no honour, no code, no loyalties; and yes, they enjoyed a needful sex, a union of personal necessity, but even this tenuous link of love—lust—was something Kotinevitch refused to acknowledge as anything other than feral. A meeting of convenience, but then, that was the way she preferred it. And Mr. Max?

  Mr. Max did not love. He was an automaton: a killing machine.

  Max by name, max by nature, she thought. When he got drunk, he drank to be sick. When he fucked, he fucked till he bled. And when assigned to murder...

  Mr. Max would not stop.

  Period.

  Chapter 5

  Cityslickers

  “Freeport 557 ahead,” said Pippa. “Bringing her round.”

  The members of Combat K braced themselves as jets howled and the Hornet slowed, slamming down through the atmosphere and into the middle of a storm. Thick grey clouds rolled, engulfed them, swathed them, grey and black and bruised, and lit internally by horizontal cracks of lightning. Several bounced off the Hornet’s hull, and Keenan and Franco exchanged glances. It reminded them of a previous mission, years ago, when they’d been struck from the sky. It had resulted in seven dead. Not a pleasant memory.

  “OK. Down we go.”

  More jets fired along with a vertical turbine; the sound of metal spinning against metal droned distantly. Then they were free of the clouds, storm rain pounding the Hornet, and The City spread before them like an infinite neon nightmare.

  “Wow baby,” said Franco.

  “Yeah,” said Keenan. “I always forget how crazy it looks, until I come back. What a dump.”

  “Ready to touch, boys. Make sure you’re buckled in.”

  Franco winked at Keenan. “That’s what she always says to me, when’s she’s in her kinky mood.”

  “In your dreams, Little Man.”

  “Often,” grinned Franco.

  Lights and lasers flooded the sky, lighting the interior of the Hornet with iridescence. Below, The City was, well, a city spreading off unto infinity. It consistently reminded Keenan of a kind of kamikaze version of Hong Kong or Tokyo, only much wider, much taller, with tiers sporting buildings built on gantries above other buildings, giving an impression of architectural anarchy, which it surely was.

  “We’ve got clearance,” said Pippa. In fact, no identity or registration had been requested, just a technical report on the ship for safety reasons. The City welcomed everyone. However, it was safe to assume the Freeports of The City were constantly observed by a myriad of spies from a fistful of different factions, some of which may even have been friendly.

  The Hornet caressed steelconcrete, suspension dipping and engines sighing. Rain drummed on the hull, running in rivulets down the cockpit. Combat K unbuckled.

  “Nice landing,” said Cam, spinning into view.

  “Why thank you,” smiled Pippa, climbing from her seat. “Nice to see that at least one of the crew has some manners. Come on Keenan, let’s get this show on the road. We’re on a tight budget. Who knows what shadowy bastards have clocked us.”

  Keenan nodded. “Kit’s all packed. Fortune gave me a contact via kube: Rebekka Kobayashi. She’s a gun runner, knows The City, can take us to a variety of dealers depending on what hardware we need. Franco, you finish that shopping list?”

  “Just uploaded it to your PAD. Everything we discussed plus some specials that might come in handy: tank killers, some new forms of explosives, that sort of thing.”

  “They teach you that in Mount Pleasant?”

  “Let’s just say I had a lot of reading time,” said Franco testily.

  Keenan and Pippa headed for the ramp, shouldered their packs, and checked their discrete holstered weapons. Keenan carried his Techrim 11mm, and both were carrying Makarov 3mm Microbore pistols and spare magazines. Just in case of “trouble”.Trouble they didn’t expect, but then, muggings and casual murder were seen as collateral damage on the streets of The City.

  “Keenan?”

  “Yeah, Franco? And I hope it’s not that same damn question.”

  “It is.”

  “Then the answer’s no.”

  “Come on, Keenan, just one pub, one bar, one beer. I’ve been locked up for three years, my man. My throat is dry. My loins are choked. I need a release.”

  “Plenty of time in the SIM SUIT on the way to Ket.”

  Franco, scowling heartily, said, “You have no soul, brother.”

  “On the contrary, I have too much. That’s why you’re staying put. I don’t want you dead.”

  “Cam?”

  “Yes, boss?”

  “Make sure the Ginger One doesn’t leave. If he does, sting him.”

  Cam, spinning slowly with a blue light blinking, seemed to turn to face Franco. Franco’s mouth had opened. Then it closed again and he frowned. It’s grinning, he thought. The little bastard is grinning! He watched Keenan and Pippa clump down the ramp, out into the leaden rain, which soaked them instantly.

  Pippa turned and smiled. “See you later, deviant.”

  Franco cursed.

  Then, with a tiny whirr of motors, the ramp sealed and trapped him inside the Hornet’s belly.

  Keenan and Pippa jogged across steelconcrete until they were under a shelter. A thousand people jostled on the walkways and ramps, the escalators and personal two-man flyers, the skeetboards and air-cycles. With his back against a neon plastic wall Keenan checked his PAD while Pippa, nervous now, watched their surroundings.

  Rain pounded. Thunder rumbled ominously. Salescreens barked and laughed, chattered and crackled. The people were a throng, jostling and jarring, and inter-mixed were what Keenan—old fashioned to the point of pedantry—still called aliens. Proxers, human in form except they had bright, bright eyes displaying silicon origins walked freely, practically without differentiation. Scattered in the mix were GGs and even more modern, much rarer and far more lethal,GKs: advanced AI systems, some humanoid in appearance, but several taking the forms of chassis blocks or spheres. There were also kajunga, who always appeared—to Keenan anyway—as small fat children, only with orange skin and a nasty vicious temperament that could never be matched by any human. Slabs lumbered in the throng, huge muscled war machines bred a hundred thousand years ago in VATS for amoral war games on a planetary scale; but now a discrete race in their own right under Time Equality Laws. There were SIMS, biomechanical humans, proxers or kajunga ranging from one of three classes: Servile, Justice, and Battle. It was all part of the upgrade service.

  “That’s a lot of guns,” said Pippa, moving close and tense beside Keenan. Like him, she preferred open country; The City, to her, was a stifling place, a place of claustrophobia, a warzone without law or justice.

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “I don’t have to think about it, I can damn well see it!”

  “Just give me another minute, then we’ll jump a FLEET. We’re meeting Kobayashi in... ahh. There, it’s Downside West of Titanium Towers. Good neighbourhood, wealthy, not much trouble. Fortune has arranged a meet in a hotel bar.”

  “Name?”

  “All That Glitters.”

  “Sounds like a brothel.”

  “Don’t be like that, Pippa. It’s a high class area. I’ve been around that sector before. Come on, let’s get away from the rain; over there, there’s a queue of FLEET cars.”

  Pippa followed Keenan. The crowd took some effort to part.

  In the shadows of a drugstall behind a curtain of draining rainfall that poured clattering from an alloy fabric roof, a hunched figure watched Keenan and Pippa
vanish into the crowd. The face was broad and brutal, and hidden a little under a tight-fitting black hat. Scars lined one cheek, and the eyes set deep in the face were small and black. His head turned left, eyes fixing on the distant Hornet. Dropping his cigarette, and crushing it under a heavy boot, he headed out into the rain.

  Franco sat in a comfortbubble, face set to scowl, eyes focused on—but not watching—a Citybroadcast. It showed golden-limbed women running naked into a lapping sea. Behind, towers speared the sky. The turquoise sea lapped along a gold shimmering beach. “TOX FILTER,” came a soothing voice. “DON’T LET THE LACK OF AN ATMOSPHERE SPOIL YOUR FUN! MAKE SURE YOU COVER UP... BEFORE YOU THROW UP!” One of the women screamed, her perfect body bending and folding, and slowly bubbling away in the toxic sea as a poisonous sun pulverised her unprotected flesh.

  “Charming,” muttered Franco. Then he eased from the bubble. “Shit. Bastard. Son of a bitchy bitch.” He stomped down the corridor and paused before the InfinityChef, but didn’t really feel like eating. His imprisonment had removed his appetite. This experience was just too damned close to his Mount Pleasant incarceration.

  “Are you reallyasking the Chef for shit?” enquired Cam, hanging immobile by Franco’s head.

  Franco started. “You little bastard, sneaking up on me like that. I’ve a good mind to give you a thrashing. Damn tennis ball.”

  “Really?” said Cam, voice soft.

  There was something about that voice that made Franco wary, something basic, and primitive, which spoke to Franco in terms of his own survival. He shivered. “Anyway,” he said, trying to act nonchalant, “what is a sting,anyway?”

  “A sharp jolt of electricity. I usually deliver it to a criminal... ha, did I say criminal? I meant person’s rectal area. That way, pain spreads out in an uncomfortable web arse-first; it also has the added comedic value of making it hard for you to go to the lavatory.”

  “Yeah,” said Franco, giving a huge grin, “but you wouldn’t do that to me, right? I mean, would you?”

  “I think,” said Cam, voice still a gentle hum, chassis still immobile, “that I might.”

  “Ye-eeees,” said Franco, shuffling a little closer. “But, I mean, after all, you’re an AI and I’m a human. That means me, well, my forbears, built you. That must surely mean I outrank you, in terms of—well— life. Yeah?”

  “Actually,” said Cam, “I have an MIR rating of—”

  Cam didn’t finish the sentence, because with surprising speed, incredible agility, and the force of a natural born pugilist, Franco caught Cam with a vicious right-hook. Cam bounced off the wall, clattered spinning on the deck, and on the rebound Franco delivered an almighty penalty-shootout kick that sent Cam bouncing and juddering down the corridor to disappear into the gloom of the cockpit.

  “Ha!” gloated a triumphant Franco. “Sting me on the arse now, you little bugger! You don’t mess with the Man on Medication!”

  He slammed the control. The ramp descended.

  And with a gleam in his eye, Franco jogged down into the rain.

  The area was surprisingly quiet, and, as Keenan had piously claimed, a considered upmarket zone of The City. Buildings were tall, sporting high security fences and electrified gates; most were built from a high grade smooth stone, marble, alloy, steel and glass. Everywhere seemed clean and well maintained; there were even trees, although as Pippa pointed out, they were grown from recipes. You could see the genetic trademark.

  Keenan halted on a street corner, with Pippa close behind. She was watching her PAD closely.

  “We OK?”

  “So far,” said Keenan, hand over his weapon beneath his coat. He was reassured by the Techrim’s bulk. “How far to the rendezvous?”

  “A klick, northeast. What does this Rebekka look like?”

  “She’s a proxer, so humanoid, bright orange eyes, long black hair. I kind of got the impression Fortune found her attractive. Said they went back a long way, and she was totally trustworthy.”

  “But he’s AI. What would he find attractive about her?”

  Keenan shrugged. “Come on.”

  They walked through the rain. On the horizon, patches of blue were beginning to show, and the downpour lightened as Pippa called a halt and waited for a group of hooded screamagers to pass.

  “Across the road.”

  Keenan’s eyes fixed on the sign. All That Glitters. A doorman stood outside, and as they watched a long purple eighteen-wheel limousine pulled up and ejected five giggling glitter-smeared young women. They collided, one dropping her glass of champagne, and they all giggled some more. Keenan blinked. He realised that glitter was, in fact, all they were wearing. They gibbered in a fast-talk local yoof language Keenan didn’t recognise; and gradually mauled one another inside. The limousine pulled away, and, with a sigh, the doorman pulled a brush and pan free, and swept up the broken glass.

  “Enjoy the show?” asked Pippa.

  “Entertaining,” admitted Keenan.

  “Looks like a rich bitch hotspot all right.”

  “No need to get touchy. It’s not a personal affront.”

  “I just hate these people,” said Pippa in a relaxed snarl. “Fucking moneyheads, wine in their veins, coke in their brains, pissing away their lives and refusing to do anything of damn worth with themselves. I warn you, Keenan, when we step foot through that doorway, if I so much as smell a footballer’s wife I’m going to put a bullet in her dumb-ass fucking skull. I just cannot helpmyself.”

  Keenan grinned. “The one thing I love about you, Pippa, is the prospect of random chaos you bring to any mission. We’re here for weapons, suits, kit. Focus on that.”

  Pippa nodded.

  “And if we do see a professional glamour model; well, let me shoot her instead.”

  The hotel was opulent to the extent of farce. The floor was one continuous flowing plasma screen. The walls were edible. The fountains ran with... Keenan dipped a finger. “Champagne,” he said, with a pained look, “and it’s vintage.”

  “How do you know? Are you fucking James Bond?”

  “Am I fucking James Bond? Not recently. I’d remember, it’d hurt.”

  Pippa stared at the topless whoretress who passed carrying a tray full of glasses; the hermaphrodite smiled dazzlingly at Keenan with gold teeth. Each tooth had a screen set in its surface. They could be tuned to a myriad of pornographic channels.

  “Damn this place,” snapped Pippa, scowling as the whoretress passed.

  “You’re just pissed she didn’t smile at you.”

  “I’ve had better. It’s so tacky in here, I’m stuck to the floor.”

  “So you’d prefer the jungle?”

  “Anytime, Keenan, anytime.”

  They approached the desk, where a young man, a deskjanitor in a stiff suit, smiled a false smile with fake steel teeth. “How can one help sir, madam.” He beamed. It wasn’t even delivered as a question.

  “We have a meeting with Rebekka Kobayashi. I believe she’s expecting us?”

  “Indeedy she is,” grinned the young man. He held out his hand. Keenan stared at it.

  “Yes?” he said politely.

  Pippa nudged him.

  “What?”

  “Tip,” hissed Pippa.

  Keenan pulled out his Techrim and pointed it at the young man’s face. The steel gleam faded. “She’s through this way, sir. If you’d just like to follow me, sir, to the lounge, sir. Yes, sir. That’s where she is, sir.”

  They followed the now bumbling deskjanitor through a series of swaying organic corridors, past crystal pillars encapsulating rare frozen life forms, over treacle carpets and finally into a spacious lounge with tinkling music and small cubic robot waiters.

  “Over by the bookcase, sir, madam.” The deskjanitor smiled again. This time he did not hold out his hand. He departed swiftly.

  Keenan felt Pippa’s glare.

  “What? What?”

  “I thought we were keeping a low profile?”

  “In The C
ity?” Keenan snorted a laugh. “You know a gun in the face is low profile.”

  “Not the gun, dickhead. I meant the tip.”

  “So you think I’m a skinflint?”

  “I think not tipping in a place like this could bring unwanted attention. It’s expected.”

  Keenan nodded. “OK. You’re more familiar with this place; I’ll let you communicate from now on. You also have the added benefit of...”

  “Yeah?”

  “The femaletouch,” smiled Keenan.

  They moved across the purposefully sticky carpets, down more steps, and across a football pitch sized lounge. It was dotted with tables, chairs, bookcases and trees: small glass trees growing from pulpmud. Several old gentlemen snoozed in comfortwraps, their little pink whiskered faces poking rat-like from folds of velvet with cigars trailing lazy smoke. Occasionally, a cubic waiter would extend an appendage and neatly trim the ash.

  They passed a circular couch where the giggling young women from the limousine were shelled in a silencefield; the only way in and out of the couch was to climb; at least Keenan and Pippa were spared a cacophony of horse-like chortles.

  “Over there.”

  “I see her.”

  Rebekka Kobayashi saw them coming and rose from her suite with fluid grace. She wore a long, simple, black dress and boots. Her hair was, as Fortune described, long and black, with a lush sheen like the pelt of a panther. Her bright orange eyes sparkled with intelligence. Pippa kicked Keenan on the ankle.

  “Fortune sent us.”

  Rebekka nodded and smiled. “Would you like to take a seat?”

  They sat, and Rebekka pulled out a small grey PAD. “You have a list to transmit? I’ll forward it to our supplier so they can assemble your shopping items while we enjoy a few relaxing drinks. Half an hour will see our business concluded.”

  “Your code?” said Pippa.

  Rebekka, with long fingers, activated her signal. “Switching to quad bandwidth. Accelerating.”