by Andy Remic
Keenan stared at him. “Are we ready for the descent?”
Emerald approached, and looked out into the drifting desolation. She smiled, and Combat K sensed her mood lift.
“I am home,” she said.
“And what a god-awful shit-hole it is,” snapped Franco.
Pippa kicked him.
“Ow! What you do that for? It’s true, isn’t it? Just take a look! It’s a wilderness of desert and rock that sucks the bloody life out of people, bejesus! It’s a shit-hole, guaranteed. I wish I was back in The City.”
“Shall we tell him about the mines?” said Pippa.
“Mines?” twitched Franco, as Pippa strapped herself into the pilot’s seat.
“Yeah, mines,” said Keenan. “The place is riddled with them. First we have to navigate what Emerald calls the Starfield; the whole atmosphere is alive with billions of tiny Pin Mines.”
“I’ve heard of them,” said Franco, eyes wide. “They’re bad.”
Keenan strapped himself into his seat. “They’re so small, a ship can’t detect them, yet they cause just enough damage to stop you going home. If you’re really unlucky they start detonating one another: you get a domino effect, a chain reaction that takes in a square kilometre of Pin Mines, and of course, you’re stuck in the middle of a molten soup, and dead as dog meat.”
“How do we get through?” breathed Franco.
“Emerald will guide us.” Keenan pulled the locking straps tight.
Franco turned to Emerald, who had also strapped herself in. She smiled brightly at Franco. “Don’t worry, I travelled this path many times, in the Old Days.”
“I thought you’d been imprisoned for thousands and thousands of years?”
“Yes.”
“So... you haven’t travelled it recently then?”
“Not for centuries,” agreed Emerald.
“So... things might have changed?”
“Possibly.”
“What happens if they have?”
“We are dead,” said Emerald without any hint of a smile.
“Why did nobody tell me?” wailed Franco.
Pippa placed a hand on his arm. “We didn’t want to worry you. I suggest you strap yourself in. We might be in for a bumpy ride. Try not to think about the mines covering the planet at ground level, as well.”
“On the surface?”
“Yeah.”
“Is this why nobody ever returned from Teller’s World?”
“One of about a hundred reasons,” nodded Pippa.
“Why wasn’t I in on this very important discussion?” Franco sounded prim and wounded.
“Because,” said Pippa through gritted teeth, “you were otherwise engaged with plastic friends in your little console game. Now, this is going to take a lot of concentration on my part; I suggest you shut up before I ask Keenan to kill you.”
Franco closed his mouth, and his eyes, and started to pray.
Engines screamed.
The Ion Gunship smashed from the heavens, jets fighting the massive gravitational pull, and Pippa focused totally on the emergence before her.
Emerald had told her of a pathway, an invisible road weaving through the Pin Mines. And, while Emerald watched the altitude meters, she guided Pippa with a precision that could afford no error.
The Reason in Madness flowed through the atmosphere, veering left then right in a gentle sine wave, towards a flat and barren black desert below. The ship’s occupants held collected breaths for long minutes, waiting for the initial explosion that would tear their craft from the sky, and send them reeling like a smoking corpse carcass to the wasteland far below. It never came.
The Ion Gunship shuddered and screeched, wailed in torture, and fought Pippa’s commands, but within twenty minutes of entering the upper atmosphere, landing struts ejected from flaps, and the Gunship touched down on an endless black plain in the middle of a roaring, raging sand storm.
Engines died, crackling.
Franco looked up through sweating fingers. “Are we alive?”
“For now,” said Emerald.
“Can I unstrap?”
“Be my guest. Just don’t go outside.”
“Why not?”
“The sandstorm would rip the skin from your face. You’d survive for about three minutes.”
“Charming. Nice homeworld you have here,” said Franco.
“It’s like this for a reason,” said Emerald.
“We’ve got company,” said Pippa.
Keenan’s head slammed left. “On the planet?”
“No. Some crazy bastard has just tracked us. I was so busy controlling this heap of junk, I never thought to look for a tail; he must have been cloaked near our entry zone.”
“Who’d want to follow us down here?” said Franco.
“None of the possible answers fill me with hope,” said Keenan.
“He’s just touched down.”
“What kind of ship is it?”
“Scanning now; we have no visual ’cos of the storm... Wait... got it. It’s an Interceptor.”
“Like the one we thought we saw back on Ket?” Franco was frowning.
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Pippa.
“Just before we got blown out of the sky?” said Keenan. “I wouldn’t mind a chat with that bastard. I think we might have a score to settle. Pippa, lock out the shields, and let’s tool up. I think there’s a guy who would like a chat.”
“You’ll get your chance in about ten minutes,” said Pippa. “The Geo Relays say the storm is about to subside.”
Keenan hoisted his MPK. He smiled a lop-sided smile and lit a home-rolled Widow Makercigarette. “Let’s go say hello, then,” he growled.
The ramp lowered into the tail-end of the storm. Black sand whipped into the loading bay, and the wind howled, wailed, cried, and ululated with a saddening forlornness. Keenan crouched, staring out into the bleak wilderness. The ramp thumped the sand, and Keenan strode down, MPK hoisted, cigarette dangling between his lips.
“Fuck it. I’ve had enough of being somebody else’s pawn.”
He turned, staring at the sleek, illegal Interceptor; there was no activity inside, and as sand curled around Keenan’s boots and knees, a swirling dervish of activity accompanied by a song of the land, Keenan pointed his weapon at the ship and unleashed a violent volley of bullets. Sparks chased one another up the cockpit, and Keenan jumped, boots sinking as he waved his MPK at the occupants.
“Come on out. I’d like a word.”
Smoke plumed again, and warily Pippa and Franco followed Keenan down the ramp, both heavily armed: Pippa with a battered MPK sub-machine gun nestled against her breast, Franco with his favourite Kekra quad-barrel machine pistols, stocky in outspread fists.
“Take it easy, boss.”
“Just want a chat, that’s all,” said Keenan. He moved forward, challenging, glaring up through the drifting dancing sand. There was a clunk, and slowly the Interceptor’s ramp descended to reveal two figures, blurred by the storm.
Keenan heard Franco gasp; he half-turned.
“It’s you, you maggot!” Franco stalked forward. “I thought we left you for dead on Ket!”
Betezh held out his arms, his expression curious. “What can I say, Franco? You know how I feel about my patients. I’d follow you ten times across the galaxy just to get you under my loving care once again. That’s just the sort of guy I am.”
Franco hoisted his weapons. “Well, it’s time I ripped off your stupid fat face and pissed down your neck!” he snarled.
“Whoa.” Keenan held up a hand. His eyes were fixed on the second figure, and he half recognised the small, unimposing man, wiry, taut, with rough features under heavy black eyebrows. Keenan took in the short beard, the black emotionless eyes. He shivered. He knew the man, but for the life of him, could not place him in his catalogue of memories. Keenan held a deep suspicion that it was to do with something very, very nasty.
“Mr. Keenan,” said the small man, pushing
past Betezh on the ramp and jumping lightly to the sand. As he approached, Keenan took in the multitude of scars criss-crossing his torso, arms, shoulders, and even his throat. Something rang a distant alarm bell.
“I know you?”
“Yes. Although the drugs we administered to make you forget may have left trace residues in the brain. You may suffer an after-image—as if you remember me from somewhere—yes? In the same way you get an uneasy itch whenever the name Kotinevitch is mentioned.”
“What game is being played here?”
“No game, Keenan.” Mr. Max smiled. “Forgive me. Let me introduce myself. I am Mr. Max, paid by General Kotinevitch to, shall we say, make sure certain events never occur. Your job is done, Mr. Keenan. You have brought Emerald home. You gained her trust with your pitiful sob stories, and now you have discovered her, removed her, and delivered her like a lamb to slaughter.”
Keenan turned. Emerald was standing at the top of the ramp, her body limp, her stance defeated. Keenan frowned, understanding of the situation slipping away like some complex technical problem in seven dimensions twisting in on itself.
“What is happening here?”
Mr. Max replied for her. “The Fractured Emerald is to come with me. The execution will be swift. There will be no pain.”
“No! I will not go with you!” Her voice was startling in its hatred.
“I think you will,” said Mr. Max. “We know your plan.”
Keenan took a step forward, threatening. “She came here with me, not you. I don’t know you, fucker. All I do know is that you’d better get back on your fancy little fighter and get the hell out of my way, before I give you something you won’t forget.”
“Careful, Keenan,” said Franco. His voice was low; Keenan logged the tone. Franco knew something, something bad about Mr. Max, and his voice held an embedded warning.
Where do I know him from? came Keenan’s unbidden internal voice.
Where? Where?
“He’s a Seed Hunter,” said Emerald, her voice a lullaby of fear.
Keenan glanced at her, at her defeat. He felt suddenly sick.
“You cannot kill him.” She smiled. “It,” she corrected.
“And he wants you?”
“Yes, they want me dead. They want my power.”
“A lie,” said Mr. Max. “She seeks to bring back Leviathan.”
“Leviathan is gone,” said Emerald.
“For now.” Mr. Max stalked forward, hands stretched into claws, face undulating, rippling as if something beneath the flesh wanted to get out. Subliminally, Keenan saw Betezh sag on the ramp, surprised, horrified even by what he was witnessing.
So, this fight was with Mr. Max— alone.
Keenan leapt forward, braced MPK tracking Max’s head and intersecting his journey to Emerald. Mr. Max halted and blinked, as if seeing Keenan for the first time. Then he smiled a far from human smile. The emotion looked wrong on his face, more pain than humour; far less than organic.
“Get out of my way.”
“Fuck you.”
Keenan opened fire, bullets howling, fire blazing from the MPK’s stocky barrel. Suddenly the world went crazy, filled not just with the remnants of the dying whipping sandstorm but also the harsh scream of bullets, Franco running for cover with his guns yammering, Pippa hitting the ground, her MPK tracking, and Keenan dropping to one knee... to blink, as he felt the MPK smashed from his gloved hands. He watched as if in a dream, fascinated by the still-spinning bullets that squirmed under Mr. Max’s skin, under his face, inside his head. They wriggled like live creatures, and popped free of entry-holes in his blasted skull. Flesh ran liquid and knitted together, wounds healing instantly. Mr. Max bent Keenan’s MPK in half and there was a crack as alloy broke. Bullets scattered to the ground from a torn magazine like pebbles and were swallowed by the black desert. Keenan looked into a face of inhuman fury; he smiled, and smashed a right straight to Mr. Max’s groin; he whirled low, leg striking out to sweep Max’s feet from beneath him... Max toppled, but did not hit the ground, instead, he turned shifting and bending and flowing as he fell, reversing the fall into a thrusting uprising attack. The blow caught Keenan under the chin and threw him a good twenty feet across the sand, where he rolled and tumbled, coming to a ragged halt. He spat blood, and a tooth, and then pushed himself painfully to his hands and knees.
Mr. Max, scowling, turned, and felt the cold touch of metal against his temple. He began to twist, a blur moving fast, but Franco pulled all four triggers on the quad-barrel Kekra, and four bullets sang on angel wings of fire, caving Mr. Max’s head in and punching him in a flurry of whirling limbs across the sand... to lie still.
The quad gunshot echoed like feedback across the barren desert, reverberating with a metal crack.
“Suck on that,” said Franco, and blew down the hot barrels with a hollow whistle, grinning a grin filled with big teeth.
Keenan stood up, swaying, and moved back across the sand towards the Reason in Madness where Pippa knelt, shocked, by the ramp, but even as he moved he immediately saw that something was wrong and Mr. Max was still flopping about, his body a skin-bag of pulp that went suddenly rigid. He sat up. Mr. Max stared down at his hands and fought to regain control... over death. There was a crunch, followed by the crack of bones realigning, and woodenly he climbed to his feet, flesh falling and rolling into place across the terrible quad gunshot wound to his head, which closed in a concave seal. He looked up, face contorted as flesh flowed into place. Then he breathed, a deep exhalation, and smiled a cold smile, colder than the void, as black eyes glittered and he surveyed the two men holding guns... and beyond, Pippa, head down, face unreadable.
“Unexpected,” he said, and strode swiftly towards Franco.
Franco’s guns came up and he fired but Mr. Max moved fast, leaping, sprinting, evading many of the shots and absorbing others with flesh slaps as he accelerated into a blur. Franco screamed as a heavy blow hammered his face and dropped him without a sound. He hit the ground, blood pouring from his caved-in nose; he rolled over several times, then lay still.
Keenan fired his weapon, his Makarov thumping his fist as he charged Mr. Max who met the charge head-on and they clashed, bouncing from one another in a flurry of blows and bullets. Keenan was knocked away, but rolled, finding his feet, his gun lost, and attacked with all his power and might. His attack was filled with the frustration of a mission, a halted journey, an abated revenge unquenched. His arms were pistons and his fists piledrivers as he smashed blow after bloody blow against Max’s pulverising skull knocking the Seed Hunter back and back and back. Keenan launched himself, boots spreading Mr. Max’s lips across his face, splintering teeth. As Max hit the ground Keenan was atop him, a small blade between his knuckles. He was snarling, an animal face filled with rage hot fury in his eyes and all humanity sympathy and empathy gone in a violent red blinding surge of something he could not comprehend. He punched out Max’s eyes with the dagger and watched milky fluid pop and spurt across the Seed Hunter’s face. But Max did not scream, did not cry out, and behind those eyes, those fake eyes, Keenan looked down fell down into a million minute glittering globes. He realised, deep inside his soul, that Mr. Max was so far from human as to be beyond understanding, and his punch dagger slammed Max’s throat cutting deep and sideways, severing the main artery in a gout of warm human blood. It was fake, all fake and false and inside Keenan could sense this charade this petty ersatz production and a sense of imminent danger went click, a detonation trigger, inside his head.
He did not see the blow. It sent him squirming across the sand, rolling, coughing on dust.
He glanced up... into Max’s boot.
Again Keenan spluttered, choking, blood pouring from his nose, a forehead cut feeding his eyes and face with a sheen of slick crimson, blinding him. He rolled, over and over, as if trying to get away, a deep groan emanating from his stomach to his lips.
He pushed himself to hands and knees...
Tried so hard to bre
athe.
The next blow broke three ribs and left him ten feet away on his back.
Mr. Max loomed into vision, his eyes all gone, and deep recessed clusters filling Keenan with a visual madness and an urgent need to laugh like a maniac. He cannot see! screamed Keenan’s brain. But of course, he could. Mr. Max was not human.
“I am sick of this shit,” snarled Max. He kicked Keenan again, sending him rolling across the desert like a limp sack of pulped bones. Keenan gazed weakly towards the tail-end of their Gunship. Colours swirled in his head. Pain receded, and he was filled with a curious light-headedness. He wondered if he would die there, lying in the sand, so close to discovering the truth...
His girls, his dead girls.
So close.
Keenan coughed, then blinked. It seemed to take a long time. His eyelids weren’t working properly. Max appeared, and behind him the Gunship was a blur of dark circular exhaust ports, ribbed with bands of TitaniumII alloy. Keenan tried to roll away, pushed himself onto one elbow, and levered himself up. He could see Emerald beyond; her hand was over her mouth, body deflated with horror, and she was doing nothing, doing nothing to help... fear etched acid on her alien face.
This is it, thought Keenan.
This... is... it.
He slumped back. Mr. Max was staring down at him. He bared his teeth, long black slivers nestling behind the false smashed stumps from Keenan’s blows. He stooped, drawing a long serrated black knife from his boot, the knife that had killed so many Ket warriors... and a million others down through distant centuries.
Max clenched the blade tight, like a lover.
He stepped over Keenan’s wounded, battered body, and straddled him.
“I’m going to cut your throat. I’m going to watch you drown in your own blood. It may take a little while.”
Keenan said nothing. He was filled with pain that pounded him from a hundred sources, a raging surf, and he was incapable of speech. Max filled his vision: a terrible frightening immortal deity looming above him like a dark shivering ghost, and Keenan felt so weak, so lost, so pitiful, so small. Self-loathing and disgust flooded through him, because strength had fled him betrayed him deserted him and he was going to die on a sand-whipped desert floor, begging silently for a life he didn’t deserve.
