War Machine (The Combat-K Series)

by Andy Remic

  Korda saw the approach, and put up his fists. He attacked, throwing several jabs, a powerful straight then an uppercut. Franco dodged them all, ribs grinding, and slammed such a powerful blow to Korda’s face that the man’s cheekbone cracked, splintered and disintegrated within the skin sack of his head. Korda went down on one knee. Blood rolled from his nose and left ear. Franco smashed another punch to his head, and Korda rocked; a third hammer-blow sent Korda to the dust... and to his coffin.

  Nobody messed with Franco after that. Of course, word went around, and other men of fighting calibre would come to challenge Franco: reigning champions of the Reinhart and Seckberg site. Huge sums of money ran on these fights, usually conducted underground in abandoned mines or deep quarry chambers, in blast holes or beside underground lakes. Franco won every fight. No quarter was given. Whatever thread had snapped inside his soul during that first bout... well, it unleashed a demon.

  It was on the 31st October—Halloween—that Franco’s mother first fell ill. The diagnosis was swift, the medical prognosis brutal: cancer of the stomach. She had six months—at best—to live.

  Franco stood on the hilltop by Rannok Tower under the dark and acid sleet, a bottle of vodka in one hand, a cylinder of OptionX in the other. It had been his intention to kill himself that night: to scream at the world, to defy the world, and God, and everything; to vent his misery and fury in the only way he could see and understand, with violence and death and annihilation. But a small voice spoke to him; it said you’re being a retard, Franco Haggis, and yes your mother is going to die and we all die and what the hell are you doing drinking and revelling in self-pity? Do you think it will help your mother to bury her only son, to go to her grave knowing that you did something so fucking foolish? Not to benefit her, oh no, but to benefit your own selfish little bout of pitiful squirming self-pity? Put down the explosive. Go home. And look after your mother as best you can... make her final days peaceful and filled with love. Be a good son. You’ll only get this one chance. You have a gift. Seize it. Give love.

  Nodding to himself, Franco stumbled from Rannok Tower, down the stone pathway and through pools of mud. He returned home and started as he meant to go on, with an out-pouring of love and caring.

  The next day, Franco followed his usual routine. Get up, brush teeth, full hearty breakfast of sausage and bacon, walk to work through the town just before dawn, and clock in at Reinhart & Seckberg Quarries Ltd. He placed his jacket delicately in his locker and then put his lunchbox on the shelf. However, instead of heading for his Section—as he had every day for the past eight years—he headed for the Office, and more precisely, for CB’s Office. CB controlled all operations at Reinhart and Seckberg Quarries Ltd. It was to CB he needed to speak.

  He knocked. There was a long pause that CB used intentionally to make people feel uncomfortable. “Come in.” Her voice was gravel: lips on cock, throat filled with raze-wire.

  She did not look up. Meekly, Franco seated himself in a rigid plastic chair before her desk, which was overflowing with important looking paperwork and digital dockets. CB continued to tap into her computer, then scrolled using a 3D Airmouse, which glittered like a tiny sun about a foot above her desk. Finally, her cold blue eyes turned on Franco, and he took in the full open horror of this... woman.

  “Yes?” The voice was a cold snap of wind on a winter’s morn.

  Franco smiled. “Hello. I’ve worked here for eight years...” he began.

  “Yes. I know how long you’ve worked here Mr. Haggis. Get to the point.”

  Franco felt a little tug at the corner of his eye. His smile fell from his face like a virgin’s dress on her wedding night.

  “I have worked here for eight years. Not once have I asked for anything, but recently I had some bad news regarding my mother. She’s been diagnosed as having stomach cancer, and I was wondering if I could possibly reduce my workload? Just a little? Cut some of my hours?”

  CB had been looking down at paperwork on her desk as Franco spoke. But now she glanced up swiftly, her lips a line of poisoned coke, bloodless and white.

  “I empathise with your predicament, Mr. Haggis,” she said, without managing to show it, “but as you know it is company policy to allow no reduction in hours. I believe it would be bad for Workflow. Bad for the Department, you understand.”

  “But I...” said Franco, tilting his head. CB held up a finger, as if to chastise a naughty schoolchild.

  “The situation is this. Reinhart and Seckberg has a huge series of orders coming in over the next four months. I cannot, cannot, allow any of the workforce the slightest reduction in hours. After all, if I gave you one day a week, how could I possibly replace one day a week? Who would want to work one day a week?”

  “But it’s my mother,” said Franco, “she’s dying.”

  “I appreciate that must be very difficult for you,” said CB. She stared at him with glass eyes. She was a machine, a replicant, a deviant. Franco felt a winter ice-storm flow over his soul, and he shivered, despite the ersatz warmth in CB’s Office. “However, the answer is still no.”

  “So that’s it. No, just like that?”

  “Is there anything else Mr. Haggis? Of course, if you don’t like my decision you could always resign.” She smiled a frosty smile. “Although you’ll find your contract binds you to a six month resignation clause. In breach, this is punishable by imprisonment as per local by-laws.” She smiled again. “Was there anything else? No? Well close the door on your way out, there’s a good lad.” She returned to her keyboard. He had been dismissed.

  Franco bristled. Anger bubbled inside him. It was a carefully controlled furnace. He tried once more.

  “If you could just see it in your heart to allow me even a few hours a week? If you want, once my mother has—passed away—I can make up any hours you might kindly allow. I will work them back tenfold; I swear it. I just need this time for my family, but I need it now.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Haggis,” was the cold verbal ejaculation. CB did not even look up.

  Dejected, destroyed, decimated, Franco climbed wearily to his feet and shuffled from the office. He went to his work and spent the day in a morbid mental chasm; darkness settled over him like rat plague.

  For the next three weeks, Franco plodded methodically to work, carried out his job, returned home, and cared for his mother. Her love and gratitude were bright cheerful things: candle flames; but it was hard work, and many nights Franco got only three hours sleep. Exhaustion became his best friend, despair his lover.

  Then, returning home from work on a Wednesday evening, he found his mother dead. Her body was shrivelled and cold, skeletal in the hold of the cancer, which had so viciously swept through her like a black gnawing tidal wave.

  Franco sat all night and cried, holding her rigid hand.

  Then he realised: he had not only been cheated of those last moments of life with the one he loved the most, but his own lack of strength had perpetuated her misery. She had died alone. And nobody should have to die alone.

  Franco finally stood, stretching his powerful frame.

  Outside, dawn light filtered through the window, and he realised he was late for work, for the first time in his life. The kube buzzed and Franco’s head snapped left.

  “Yes?” he said into the mouthpiece.

  “This is CB at Reinhart and Seckberg Quarries Ltd. It would appear you are late for work, Mr. Haggis.”

  “My mother has just died,” said Franco, a black hole collapsing his heart. “Give me an hour.”

  “If you are more than an hour I am sorry to say you will be an ex-employee, Mr. Haggis. And we all know how many people are out of work in this town. With regard to your wages: they will, of course, be docked.”

  “Of course, CB,” said Franco.

  The kube buzzed again and died.

  Franco looked up. His eyes were full of tears, but he did not allow them to fall. A terrible rage slammed through him like an axe blade. He licked his lips slowly, stoope
d and closed his mother’s eyes, kissed her cold dead lips, and then strode to the door. He took his jacket. He looked back at the room—the house—which seemed suddenly so small; it had shrunk with the passing of She who filled it with warmth, with life.

  Franco remembered happy times: playing with friends, joyous meals around the small timber-plank table; slumped, watching TV or playing games on his Smash System.

  All gone, he realised, cold and dead, and gone.

  You want me to come back to work? he thought savagely.

  OK, I’ll fucking come back to work.

  The door slammed, and Franco strode out into the cold.

  The following night was as clear as black liquor and filled to the brim with glittering stars. Ice crackled across streams and lakes, layered roads with a crust of sugar, and sent frosty crystals sparkling into a starlit sky.

  The night was cut by the harsh drone of a truck. Headlights the size of dinner plates segregated the darkness as a mammoth vehicle laboured up a steep incline and paused for a moment, gears crunching, before lurching onwards with a flurry of slippery ice-rimed tyres.

  This was no ordinary truck. This was a FukTruk, military spec, and able to carry a tank across the moon. It was currently being abused beyond the call of duty. Oil dripped from a desecrated engine, leaving a tiny trail from inception to completion.

  The gates were locked. Metal security dogs—Jawz—patrolled inside, diamond eyes glittering as the FukTruk rolled to a halt with a crunch outside the razewire laser-fence; lights illuminated a sign which read, on a bent and rusted platter: REINHART & SECKBERG QUARRIES LTD. Occasionally, the sign would fizzle and flutter, something wrong with the electronics.

  Franco jumped down and smiled grimly. Only a lunatic would make a highly technological sign appear so rusted and beaten, as if preserving a heritage.

  “Ha.”

  Franco stomped up to the gates; beyond, the six metal beasts padded over to him, curious. They were each as high as Franco’s shoulder, their jaws easily able to bite—and squash—a man’s head. They were bullet proof, bomb proof, hell, probably even nuke proof, thought Franco as he fiddled with the door locks, which were digital, effective, good. Franco nodded, attached something to the lock, and took a step back.

  “Go on, shoo.”

  One of the metal Jawz growled at Franco. He tutted, reached through the fence and patted its head. “What, you don’t remember little happy Franco? You don’t remember me rubbing your belly in the kennel and giving you bowls of used engine oil to lap when you were a liccle off-duty puppy?”

  The beast whined. Franco nodded, smiling in understanding. There was a connection.

  “Good boy. Now go on, get out of the way.”

  He jogged back to the FukTruk, climbed into the cab and initiated the cold charge. There was a whump, and the lock on the gates blew. Franco revved the engine and ploughed forward, smashing through the barriers and growling up the sweeping road towards...

  The Stores, and—more importantly—their contents.

  It took him an hour to load the FukTruk, and a further hour in the dark cramped tunnels beyond the Stores. Then, grinding gears, he left the quarry behind, and rattled and bumped his way through this small town in the middle of nowhere, the arse-end of beyond, only recognised on a map of the area because of the damned quarry and its precious cargo. Franco grinned grimly. Well, he’d show them a precious cargo all right.

  The town lay decadent in semi-darkness, scattered with a witch-light of the small hours. Franco passed a parked-up police car, but the officers inside were too busy snoring through sugar-peppered beards to notice the wagon full of explosives cruising the dark mean town streets.

  Franco followed little used roads, emerging from the town like a bullet from a gun. Darkness swept down over him. The FukTruk’s headlights cut swathes from the night pie. Grumbling up narrow roads, twisting and winding between gulleys and huge formations of rock, Franco finally emerged, the engine smoking and honking, onto a plateau that overlooked the town. CB’s white-walled mansion stood before him; huge steel towers reared into the night, and a light rain began to fall, making fine white stone glisten.

  “Honey, I’m home.”

  Franco grinned, and put down his foot. The gates parted like butter beneath the grille of the FukTruk, and ploughing up the gravel drive, he saw activity within. Lights flickered; several came on, tiny yellow squares in the mammoth façade of white and steel bleakness.

  Franco jumped down and lit a cigarette while he waited. Not normally a smoker, he coughed heavily, but inhaled the alien jaja tobacco, and felt his head spin and colours start to reverse. It also stopped his hands from shaking, and took away his desire to kill. Very important that. He didn’t want to go losing his temper too early, oh no.

  CB appeared at the door. She was frowning. Behind her stood... a priest? He was dressed in old-Earth garb, white collar, magenta silk shirt. Over this, he wore CB’s silk effluvia-stained dressing gown, which kind of ruined the effect of believableHoly Man.

  She came down three of the sweeping steps that led to her mansion and squinted, blinded by the FukTruk’s lights. She shielded her eyes. “Who’s there? Show yourself! I have already called the police.” Her night-dress was frighteningly short, riding up to allow glimpses of her straggly grey pubic hair.

  “Nice house,” said Franco, stepping forward and taking another blast on his cigarette. Smoke plumed around his head, accentuated by the FukTruk’s beams.

  “What do you want?” She showed teeth in an ugly smile.

  Franco opened his long coat and pulled free a sawn-off shotgun. The metal gleamed, evil and dull. Franco held the weapon nonchalantly, pointing at the ground, but implying his threat. He smiled at CB.

  “I want you to watch something.”

  “The police will be here any moment!”

  “Yes, but unfortunately, not quickly enough.”

  “Do you want a pay rise?”

  Franco snorted a laugh. “What? What? You see me here, with a gun, and a FukTruk loaded with enough HighJ and OptionX, not just to blow up your mansion, but to remove the fucking hillside; and you ask if I want a pay rise? Lady, you’ve got your head screwed on inside-out.”

  “What d-do you want?” CB was sweating. It glistened on her moustache.

  “Follow me.”

  “Where we going?”

  “Over here.”

  The rain increased, and CB’s slippers crunched on gravel. Her priest lover bravely stood his ground in the arched doorway of the mansion; Franco ignored him with unspoken contempt.

  “Wh-what do you want with me?”

  Franco led a soaked CB to the edge of the hill. The town spread out below like a map. Beyond, glittering, they could make out the weave of lights like a distant runway, scattering and flowing, and eventually leading to the quarry, and the circle of floodlights cut into the wall of the mountain.

  “You see the quarry?”

  “Yes.”

  “You see a disease, burrowing into the mountain, taking from the mountain, eating away at the land like a parasite. You feed, people like you, feed from the little people. Well, I’m a little person. Nothing wrong with that, I like being a little person, never right interested in politicking or running the country or such-forth. I’ve got no interest in education or law. I’ve got my happy little life, my family, and that’s what matters to me. I am a cog, in the machine, and happy to be a cog. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “What are you gibbering about, man?” snapped CB, her natural hateful arrogance returning in force.

  Franco pushed the shotgun under her chin. The rough hacksaw-edged twin barrels forced her head to lift and she met his gaze. Then she realised she was staring into the eyes of a maniac.

  “All I needed was some free time to spend with my mother,” said Franco.

  “But I—”

  “All I needed was time with her before she died.”

  “Please don’t—”

  “And you co
uldn’t even give me that.”

  Franco removed the gun, spat on the ground and stared out at the quarry. Then he produced a small grey box from his pocket. CB’s eyes fixed on the box. It was a standard Grade F detonation control. She glanced back at the FukTruk, gleaming under its slick shroud of rain and sleet.

  “You’re going to kill us all!” she wailed.

  “Be serious,” growled Franco...

  And threw the switch.

  Distantly, fire blossomed, huge orange and purple petals unfolding against the distant mountainside. A rumbling concussion slammed through the ground, and even at this distance they felt the crack crack crack beneath their feet. The ground shook. Flames rolled up into a mushroom cloud, filled with a dense grey of pulped stone and dust, which eventually expanded and blocked out the fire. A terrible darkness filled the night sky, rolling up into the rain-filled heavens and spreading out, covering the town, blocking out all lights.

  Franco held up his hand. He laughed.

  Dust fell from the sky like ash, and settled in their hair.

  “What have you done?” hissed CB.

  “I’ve blown the quarry. All your access tunnels have gone: all your carefully cut research tunnels, your detonation tracks, everything. I’ve returned the mountain to itself. I’ve closed you down for good, fucker.”

  CB paled beneath the mountain fallout. Realisation hit her like a sledgehammer, and she swooned. Franco had blown all her excavations, her jewel extraction mines, her structural survey tunnels. That meant the mountain had become nothing more than a mountain. To continue quarrying and mining, she would have to...

  Begin again.

  Sirens wailed, coming up the hillside road.

  Franco put his shotgun under CB’s chin again.