“Colm.”
Behind the flimsy plastic visor of the suit, Colm looked blue with cold. Panicking, Axel shook him. That, or Axel’s helmet lamp shining in his face, made Colm blink.
Alive.
Axel turned on his helmet’s interior light, so Colm could see who was inside the Marine leathers. He started to disentangle him from the tree. Colm struggled violently.
“Careful, you’ll rip your suit,” Axel shouted, forgetting Colm couldn’t hear him. The weird fluorescent orange suit looked about as tough as a plastic shopping bag. “Stay cool, Mackenzie. You’re going back to the Unsinkable.”
In the Corvette, while the Marines fussed over the sentrienza princess, Colm said in a low voice, “Why?” He was on oxygen, so the words came out sounding hollow through the mask. “Why did you rescue me?”
Axel didn’t mention CHEMICAL MAGE. He told the truth. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Meg.”
With this self-sacrifice, he was proving himself worthy of the woman he loved ... by rescuing the man she loved better than him.
CHAPTER 56
MEG FLOATED IN DARKNESS. A pale green glow radiated from beneath her. It was the throne of skulls, glowing in the night of the dead spaceship.
A wet globule smacked her cheek. She tried to wipe it off, but with screwball dream logic, she only succeeded in smearing the wetness over her face.
Around her, bodies drifted in a slow inertial dance.
Sentrienza bodies.
She had killed them all.
The queen.
The king.
All seven of the royal guards who had come to Thteir Majesties’ aid before the automated pressure doors locked, sealing this precious bubble of air away from the dying ship.
But the seventh royal guard had got her. The cauterized stump of her right arm inflamed her body with agony.
Not that it mattered. She was going to die, anyway, when the blister cooled or the oxygen ran out, whichever happened first.
A breeze blew, chilling the wetness on her face.
She turned over tiredly in the air, and gasped at the sight of a shoal of black humanoids scudding around the throne. Voices bruised the silence: “Fucking ... skulls ... What’s that up there?”
She was too dehydrated to speak. She waved to them, forgetting her right hand wasn’t there.
But they’d seen her. They surrounded her, angels in Marine Corps leathers. She reached out to them, thinking they’d come to save her. Then they removed their helmets. Instead of heads, they had glowing skulls ...
She woke from the nightmare in darkness that smelled of overheated circuit boards and dirty air filters. It was over. The Marines had had perfectly normal heads. They’d rescued her. She was tucked up in sickbay aboard the Unsinkable, wide awake, heart thudding. The wetness on her face was not blood, but tears.
Colm Mackenzie, she’d said to the Marines. Did he make it?
Sorry, ma’am.
With that, her victory had turned sour.
A crack of light split the dark. A human shadow blocked it. Meg turned her face to the wall.
A hand tentatively touched her shoulder.
“Go away, Axel,” she muttered.
“It’s me, Gunny.”
She fought free of the blankets. The LEDs on the biometric monitors around her bunk revealed Colm’s face.
She let out a yelp of joy and tried to wrap her arms around his neck before remembering, yet again, that she only had one arm.
“They said they’re making you a prosthetic,” Colm said. He squeezed into the narrow bunk beside her. “It’ll be top of the line, the best money can buy. You’re a hero. You killed the king and queen of Betelgeuse.”
“I didn’t get my contract back. That’s what I went for in the first place.”
“Huh?”
“It doesn’t matter. Where’d you spring from, Collie Mack? They said you didn’t make it.”
“I’ve just been rescued.” He tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder. “I came straight away to see how you were.”
*
COLM HAD ONLY INTENDED to visit Meg in sickbay, not crawl into bed with her. But her delighted welcome unlocked a need for closeness that tricked him into making one mistake, then another. He kissed her hair, and then her mouth. She was wearing thin pyjamas. His hands roamed. No bra, no underpants ...
Shouldn’t do this. She’s still in recovery. She’s not yours ...
She made the decision for them both, wriggling out of her pyjama bottoms. He tried to be gentle and take it slowly, but got carried away at the end, and shunted her head and shoulders off the side of the narrow bunk as he came inside her.
“Sorry!” Sorry for nearly shoving you out of bed. Sorry for making love to you. I see you as a little sister, not a sex object. This was wrong.
But she was laughing. “Wow. That was amazing.”
He checked the dressing on her stump to make sure it hadn’t come loose. The arm had been taken off at the elbow. It broke his heart to see her mutilated. “The price of heroism,” he said.
“Oh, shut up about that.” She yawned. “I just wish I would’ve got Emnl, too.”
“The princess?”
“Yeah. She was a complete bitch. As bad as her mother, but better at faking it. At least she’s dead, but I would’ve liked to do it myself ... Ignore me, I’m just being vengeful.”
Colm started to tell her that Emnl ki-Sharongat was not dead, that she’d been rescued with him. But Meg was yawning, snuggling down in the blankets. There’d be time to talk later.
He stayed with her until her breathing slowed to an even rhythm. “Sweet dreams,” he whispered, easing out of the bunk.
When he got back to his own berth, Axel was waiting for him. “Where’ve you been?”
“Went to see Meg,” Colm said. Guilt poleaxed him. He looked down to make sure his t-shirt was tucked in and his sweatpants knotted at the waist. He wasn’t sure how things stood between Axel and Meg right now. Couldn’t be all that great, since Meg had hardly kicked Colm out of her bed. But that didn’t mean Axel would be happy if he knew what had just happened.
“You were awhile,” Axel said, but before Colm could think up an excuse, Axel moved over to one of the spare racks. A clean dress uniform lay on it. Colm had subconsciously assumed it belonged to someone else, but the Unsinkable was so undermanned, he had this eight-man berth to himself.
“Whose is that?”
“Yours. You’re wanted on the bridge.”
Colm picked up the jacket. The shoulder insignia bragged that its owner was a lieutenant commander. However, the nametag said MACKENZIE. “I’ve been promoted?”
“They offered me a promotion, too,” Axel said. “Lieutenant colonel. I haven’t decided if I’m going to take it.”
“Why?”
Axel shrugged. “Meg got second lieutenant. She accepted.”
“She didn’t say anything about that.”
Axel lifted an eyebrow. But all he said was, “Tan was up for first lieutenant, but he turned them down. Said he’s going to spend more time with his family from now on.”
“Yeah, I talked to him earlier.” Colm grinned, relieved at the change of subject and cheered by the memory of the conversation. “They’re going to convert the Vienna back into a krill fishing factory.”
“Smart move,” Axel said. “The troops will need to eat. Well, either put on those blues, or put on something else. You can’t show up on the bridge in sweatpants.”
Colm had nothing else to wear. He had no possessions in the world. “Do you have a knife?”
“Feeling murderous?”
“No, I just don’t feel like a lieutenant commander.”
Sighing, Axel handed over a bowie knife. Colm hacked the insignia off the new jacket before putting it on.
“They’re not gonna like that.”
“They can stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
Colm and Axel climbed the companionways, through once-fam
iliar decks. The Unsinkable looked like a campsite the day after a music festival. Piles of garbage cluttered the corners. Yellow tape cordoned off missing decks. Distant noises of hammering and drilling broke the silence. Work crews were mending, painting, rewiring, and scrubbing, preparing the carrier for active service once more. Colm had no intention of sticking around for that. His one desire was to get away. He hoped he hadn’t already left it too late.
The bridge, at least, looked the same as ever. Concentric rings of desktop holo displays bathed staff officers in aquatic light. Tension bled out in curt jargon-studded exchanges.
“I’ll leave you here,” Axel said. “Admiral Hyland’s office is that way.”
Colm trudged across the bridge and knocked, full of misgivings.
“Come in!”
The office was spacious, with a coffee table and armchairs grouped on the carpet to the side of the Rat’s desk. Captain—whoops, Admiral—Hyland rose from behind his desk. His gaze snapped to the loose threads on Colm’s shoulders, and his lips tightened beneath his graying moustache. But he shook Colm’s hand. “Mackenzie. Good to have you back.”
They sat in hard armchairs, facing each other across the coffee table, and made small talk. Colm couldn’t concentrate, having noticed something very ominous: one of Tim Jenkins’s hazard suits, folded up in a spare armchair.
The Rat caught him looking at it. “Yes. I’d like to talk to you about that.”
Colm had a sudden craving for a cigarette. The other craving was there as well, a distracting tickle in his veins.
“Where did this come from?” the Rat said, poking the hazard suit with one finger.
Colm reminded himself he was not in the Navy anymore. He was not obliged to answer. “I’d rather not say.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” The Rat seemed more amused than irritated. He tilted his gaze up the way people did when speaking into their comms implants. “Mind joining us, gentlemen?”
A staff colonel opened the door and announced importantly, “The governor of Juradis, sir, and the High Commissioner of the Uzzizellan government in exile.”
Colm started to stand up.
“No, you stay right where you are,” the Rat said.
A man and a queazel walked in. The man was the famous Philip K. Best—Axel’s father. The queazel was Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth.
Gil did not meet Colm’s eyes. He curled up in an armchair and listlessly refused coffee. Best took his black.
“I just wanted to stop by and offer my congratulations,” Best said to Colm, as if this wasn’t a set-up. Colm scarcely listened, preoccupied with trying to figure out what they wanted from him. “I’m leaving for the surface this afternoon. High Commissioner Nulth and myself have a lot of work to do. I’ve run an interstellar corporation, but I’m told that’s easy compared to running a planet.”
Gil whined, “The sentrienza will not let us keep it.”
“That’s what we’re here to discuss,” the Rat said. “You’re right, of course, that the sentrienza will attempt to retake the planet. The balance of their Betelgeuse fleet is on its way from Noom and Barjoltan. We’re drawing up plans to neutralize them before they reach Juradis. I’m not going to sugarcoat it: it will be a hard fight.” He turned to Colm. “We’ve been apprised of your role in the uprising. We’d like you to do that again.”
Colm stirred his coffee. He understood now what they wanted from him. A primitive instinct inherited from generations of Mackenzies told him to play dumb. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh yes, you do,” the Rat said with a flash of temper that betrayed the pressure he was under.
“I didn’t do anything special.”
“We know everything,” Philip K. Best said. “Hell, Mackenzie, we know more about you than your own mother does.”
“And we’ve got an eyewitness, so there’s that, too,” the Rat said, nodding at Gil.
“I’m really not interested—”
“Too fucking bad. You’re the only magician we’ve got. No is not an acceptable answer.”
“I’m not a—a magician.”
The Rat half-stood and threw Tim Jenkins’s hazard suit across the coffee table at him. “Then where did that come from?”
Colm instinctively fended the suit off. It fell on the table, knocking over cups, sending small rivers of coffee to the floor.
Philip K. Best calmly twitched his legs clear of the spill. “Your potential was identified at the very beginning of the CHEMICAL MAGE project.”
“You were involved from the beginning?”
“We assisted with research.”
“But Axel—”
Gil snickered. “They didn’t think Axel needed to know about it. A charming family!” He roused himself enough to point a claw at Philip K. Best. “He sacrificed his son’s military career to preserve the secrecy of the project, while keeping him entirely in the dark. He did not expect that Axel would come all the way to Juradis looking for answers!”
Pink tinged Philip K. Best’s smooth cheeks. “My relationship with my son is irrelevant. And I’d hope we all agree that discretion was paramount. Hell! We were looking for magicians! Public trust in the Fleet would have tanked if that got out.”
“I’ll say,” Colm muttered. He had new respect for Axel’s integrity. Now that it was too late, he wished he’d trusted him to begin with. “Just out of curiosity, why did I pop up in your search?”
“Mostly your family background,” the Rat said.
Birthday parties and school festivals flashed through Colm’s mind. That travelling circus. A gig at the Edinburgh Arts Festival. Useless to ask where his father had slipped up, what he’d done that was just a little too amazing. If only he’d stuck to balloon animals.
“So you experimented on me,” Colm said. “Turned me into a chemical mage ... and the Ghosts invaded Sol system.” It was on the tip of his tongue to tel them that the Ghosts were now on Earth. But then they’d want to know how he knew. “Heckuva job, sir.”
The Rat said shortly, “The Ghost attacks in the Kuiper Belt were an unintended consequence of the CHEMICAL MAGE project. Key word, unintended.”
Colm figured he could probably put everyone in this room in jail for life, if this ever got back to Earth. Unintended was not a defense that would impress the governing authorities of a planet fighting for its life. But who knows? Maybe the Human Republic itself had approved this mad project.
“CHEMICAL MAGE levels the playing field,” the Rat said. “The implant enables you to tap into your genetic heritage. It gives you the power to work magic. Just like the Ghosts. You summoned them to the Kuiper Belt, and you summoned them to Juradis. You can do that again! We’ll put you on a fast STL ship to Noom. You’ll summon some more of your friends and hit the sentrienza in the rear. Rinse and repeat on Barjoltan.”
“You’re making a big assumption about my ‘friends,’” Colm said.
“What’s that?”
“Well, that they are my friends.”
“Aren’t they?”
Colm wanted to head-butt the wall. “Have you forgotten that the Ghosts are attacking Earth right now?”
“But they’ve demonstrated they are equally willing to attack the sentrienza,” Philip K. Best said eagerly. “My enemy’s enemy—”
Colm interrupted, “No. I’m sorry. I won’t do it.” He glanced at Gil, hoping for support. You’re making a terrible mistake, the queazel had said, back at Castle Nulth. An assessment Colm now agreed with. Wouldn’t Gil understand his refusal to make the same mistake again?
But Gil stayed silent, and the Rat said, “Actually, you’ve got to do it. Remember the Days of Glory?”
Colm’s throat closed up.
“I think you do remember. It was a Fleet frigate. It intercepted you after you took off from Gna, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind you. Instead of cooperating, you fired on it.”
Colm remembered that as clearly as if it had been yesterday. It had killed him to fire on a Fleet s
hip, but he had felt he didn’t have any choice.
“Explosive rounds. Fired at close range, without provocation—”
“Did they hit the Days of Glory?”
“One did. There were no deaths, but multiple injuries. Or perhaps there were deaths,” the Rat said, his eyes glinting. “Perhaps you destroyed the ship. It’s gone now, anyway.”
Colm prayed this wasn’t the truth. But that still left the truth that he’d fired on the Days of Glory. Who’d be going to jail for life, if he didn’t cooperate? Not the Rat, not Best. Him, a rogue pilot who had broken every rule in the book.
“This is your chance to make amends,” the Rat said impatiently. “Christ, man, what’s your problem?”
Make amends, by unleashing still more death and destruction? Colm stood up abruptly. “I need to talk to Gil. Alone.”
CHAPTER 57
AND NOT ON THE bridge, where the walls had ears. Man and queazel climbed through the ship to the weather deck. Here, long ago, Colm had organized Erik Bekkelund’s wake. He picked an empty compartment at random. Refugees had left dirty rags and a broken computer behind, but they themselves had gone down to the surface. To the best of Colm’s knowledge there was no surveillance up here.
Gil nosed into the corners, whining.
“Quick,” Colm said. “Before they catch up with us.” The Rat had grudgingly agreed to this private conference, but he would have sent people to follow them. “Have you got my drugs?”
Gil sighed gustily. He wrenched a vial out of one of the many pockets of his black brocade vest and tossed it to Colm.
Colm dry-swallowed two pills. The rush hit within seconds. He knew it wouldn’t last, but he might as well enjoy it while it did. He sat down on the bare floor with his legs stretched out. Gil curled up beside him and extracted a pack of cigarettes from another pocket. “No smoking on the bridge,” he complained. “Would you like one?”
“Thanks.” Colm lit up. “So, is it all true?”
Gil said through a cloud of smoke, “Yes.”
The Chemical Mage: Supernatural Hard Science Fiction (The Tegression Trilogy Book 1) Page 34
