by Gavin Smith
I stood up. As my hearing returned, along with a new ringing sound, I could hear the crowd again. Some of them were booing, which I didn’t think was fair. I didn’t look over the side at the place where Rannu had gone over. Instead I walked along some twenty feet and then peered over the edge, hoping to see him swimming. As I did so he swung back up onto the flight deck, landing low and steady, knees bent with an easy grace. He was about thirty feet from where I stood. He quickly moved towards the centre of the deck. I jogged backwards, hands in a loose guard, to join him. Still, I had the feeling my best trick had gone.
He skipped forward and was in the air again as his knee hit my chest and his fists hit me on either side of my head so hard that they would have crushed an unarmoured skull. I staggered back. My visual display became a line and then blinked off, leaving me in darkness. It came back in time for me to see another boot flying towards my face. Darkness again. I flung myself away in a manner I hoped was so random he wouldn’t be expecting it. A glancing blow on the shoulder knocked me to the deck; the knees of my jeans were torn as I hit it. I assumed he was in the air and rolled backwards coming to my feet as I heard his combat boots hit the flight deck in front of me.
My vision returned grainy and interspersed with static. Rannu was turning towards me. I leapt into the air, somehow managed to grab his head and powered my knee into his face with enough force that I heard something crunch. It was one of the most satisfying blows I’d ever landed. He staggered back as I landed but stayed on his feet. I leapt up again, this time bringing both knees up to his chin, while bringing both my elbows down on the top of his head. And he punched me. I did that to him and he should’ve died, armoured cyborg or not, and he had the presence of mind to fucking punch me.
The blow caught me solidly in the stomach and threw me back as I’d still been in mid-air. He was hurt. His face was covered in blood. It had that strange split look that comes from damaged subcutaneous armoured plate, his features distorted. I stepped forward hoping to press what little advantage I may have still had. I swung at him again but he wasn’t there. I made the mistake of looking up instead of just moving as his boot axed into the top of my head and drove me into the flight deck. I tried to get up and another kick hit me in the head. I hit the deck again and expected him to finish me but nothing happened.
I managed to climb onto my hands and knees. I spat out blood and overrode the warning icons on my flickering internal visual display, as they seemed to be filling my vision now. Rannu had backed off. He was standing some twenty feet away from me, just watching, because he’d figured out something that I hadn’t yet. It came to me when I heard the tribal chanting and cheering of the crowd. This was entertainment. Maybe the jaded veterans watching had seen it all before but so what? After seeing your squad torn apart by the tentacles of an alien Walker you weren’t going to be all that impressed by what was on the viz. After all, Roman legionnaires had still gone to the Colosseum and vets still went to pit fights. It was a lot safer to see others fighting than have to do it yourself, and I had to admit it I was a pretty good kick-boxer, entertaining to watch.
Rannu was better, but here was the thing: when two guys of comparable skill go at it, the hungrier guy wins. I was the hungrier guy. I was almost certainly fighting for my life as well as Pagan’s and Morag’s. Now I liked Pagan but he had the potential to even further complicate my life, and I guess Morag did as well, but at this moment, more than anything, I really did not want to see her hurt. The intensity of that surprised me. I was fighting for my life and this guy still felt he was able to put on a show.
I’m not sure if I could’ve beaten him in my prime but he was younger, faster and stronger than me, and if I was being honest probably had fewer bad habits. That got me. I was only thirty - kind of old in our brave new world - and Rannu was proving that I was obsolete. Maybe this was what Balor was talking about. I had all these augmentations and skills. Even in a society completely geared towards war I had to be considered among the more dangerous, yet I was at the mercy of people like Rolleston, the Grey Lady, Balor and now this punk. That was depressing. And now I could barely stand up.
Rannu was in the air again. I didn’t move. He landed with his knees on my shoulders, his elbow about to hammer down on my head. It would be a good finish, something for all the fight fans. I was going to have to take the elbow strike, got to give a little to get a little. My claws shot out of the internal sheaths in my arm and I rammed them up into each of his thighs. I felt the resistance of his subcutaneous armour and then it gave as I pushed them into him, a sense of satisfaction before the darkness.
I wasn’t sure whether I’d blacked out or my internal visual display had gone down again, but when my vision returned I was staggering around dangerously close to the edge. I lurched away from it, spinning round and overcompensating as I tried to find Rannu. I was nearly overcome by nausea and the pain. I guessed I’d exhausted the abilities of my internal pain management systems and my reservoir of powerful painkillers over the last couple of days.
Rannu was on his feet but bent over holding his bleeding thighs. Why was he standing up? I think I may have even muttered that. I could hear more booing. Fuck ‘em. Rannu looked up at me. The fucker didn’t even have the common courtesy to look angry.
Suddenly I was aware that the huge figure on many of the viz screens around the square was me. Though it didn’t look like me. The figure’s features were misshapen and he was wet, bloody and breathing heavily. I looked at the figure and wondered why he was still fighting. Some strange part of my brain couldn’t help admiring the composition of the shot.
There was cheering as Rannu drew the kukri at his side. It looked old and sharp. I spat some blood out. Rannu seemed battered and tired, or at least I hoped he did. I walked towards him with what I thought was purpose. I meant to do him harm but I may’ve just been staggering at him. Why was I still standing?
We traded kicks, ineffectually slicing at the other’s legs with our blades, hitting armour and sometimes cutting through. That was about as far as we got with skill, we just started to slash at each other. He was good with the knife. He parried my attacks and slashed at me.
I caught the vicious-looking knife on my blades and countered. The thing is I had two weapons to his one, and although he was fast and managed to parry many of my attacks, more of them were getting through. Like a good kick-boxer he knew he had to take his licks to give them. Neither of us broke. Both of us were red.
Finally I noticed that I was slowly pushing him back. A slash to his forehead bled into his eyes. He swung just a little wide. I don’t know how I had the presence of mind to realise his mistake and push my advantage. The blades on my right hand pierced his right wrist. I all but heard the crowd’s intake of breath. With some satisfaction it was also the first time I heard Rannu cry out in pain. The kukri flew from his hand. I punched forward with the blades on my left hand and he bent backwards so far that they shot over his face. Somehow I was peripherally aware of the kukri sliding to the end of the flight deck and tipping over, falling towards the water.
With my blades still in his arm he kicked me in the face. I staggered back, spitting more blood. I heard another cry of pain from Rannu as my blades were torn out of his arm. His forehead was coming towards me. There was a crunching noise from my nose. I staggered back but managed to recover sufficiently to punch forward with my right. He caught the prosthetic, twisted his arm around it and elbowed me repeatedly in the face with his other arm. That was when I knew the fight was finally over. Rannu kicked my legs out from under me. I hadn’t done so bad, better than I thought. I hit the deck. Shame I’d let everyone down. Blacking out would be good. Will he just kill me now? I thought I was beyond pain until I felt the tearing at my right shoulder. I found the energy to scream. Why wasn’t I unconscious?
I rolled around on the wet flight deck. Just as I saw the bloody stump of my prosthetic arm flying towards my face I saw the weirdest thing on the viz screen. The figure on i
t wasn’t me or Rannu. It was Morag. She looked really upset, like she was terrified and had been crying. It was like a reaction shot from an old viz. I got hit with my own arm. Nothing.
16
New York
I wasn’t sure whether I was more surprised or disappointed to be alive. I felt I needed a rest and this wasn’t it. Smell returned first, antiseptic, which was good as it suggested a hospital. There was the faint rotting smell of low tide, so I was still in New York, and the familiar friendly smell of tobacco.
‘Fag,’ I croaked. I was trying to decide how I felt about opening my eyes. I came to the conclusion that doubtless something bad would happen to me when I did. I felt a cigarette placed between my lips and heard the wheel of an old-fashioned lighter being flicked. It sounded very familiar. A brief warmth on my face and I sucked in the smoke. I didn’t even cough as my internal filters went to work. "S my lighter?’ I asked.
‘Mine now,’ a voice said. It sounded familiar. ‘Tell me, have you ever won a fight?’ I cracked an eye open. I was surprised that my vision seemed to be working just fine. It took a moment for me to recognise his slightly off-kilter features as he’d grown a rather wispy and slightly sad-looking beard and dyed that and his hair dark brown. He was huddled in a parka drinking from a bottle of expensive-looking, proper Russian vodka.
‘Fuck off,’ I said by way of greeting. Mudge smiled, the corners of his eyes turning up round the expensive camera-lens eye implants that he’d used to shoot the war. He took the cigarette back and took a drag on it as he kicked back in the chair. Beneath the jeans he was wearing were, I knew, a pair of top-of-the-line prosthetic legs. He’d always boasted he could run faster than anyone in the troop and would do if things ever got really bad, and he could move really fast when correctly motivated, but he never ran.
‘Did that cunt really tear my arm off?’ I asked. I couldn’t really feel any pain but I was trying to ignore that in case I was paralysed.
‘You mean Mr Nagarkoti?’ Mudge asked, pointing past me. I turned my head and saw Rannu in a bed less than four feet from me. He was awake and watching me, his face impassive as ever. He had medgels and -paks all over his face and the top part of his body. I felt good about that. I answered a lot of questions about how I was feeling by trying to crawl out of the bed to kill him.
‘Easy, tiger,’ Mudge said, grabbing me and pulling me back into bed. The fact that he could do this suggested I wasn’t quite back to my old self just yet. Rannu seemed to find this funny, further infuriating me.
‘Get me a gun, get me a fucking gun!’ I demanded.
‘Shut up,’ Mudge said. ‘And to answer your question, yes, he tore off your arm and beat you with it. It was pretty fucking brutal, man. He just kept beating you with it. Balor had to swing in and stop him. Nobody’s quite sure why you’re alive.’
I turned around to glare at Rannu. His face was impassive again. Then something occurred to me. ‘You saw it?’ I asked.
‘You getting your arse kicked?’
‘I didn’t do that bad.’
‘No, you came a close second. Yeah, I saw. I was driving the media deck.’
‘You filmed us?’
‘Hell yeah. Not every day you can profit from seeing a close friend get beat mostly to death.’ He grinned and the pair of us lapsed into silence. I had a closer look around. We were in some kind of hospital ward, all peeling paint and old beds, but the linen was clean and all the medical equipment couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty years out of date. There were about a dozen or so beds in here but Mudge, Rannu and I were the only people in the ward. White curtains were pulled across the windows but a pale light shone through the thin material.
‘How long was I out?’ I asked. Mudge took another generous sip from the bottle of vodka and offered me a mouthful. I shook my head but hoped Morag was alive and more importantly still had my whisky. You have to learn to prioritise at a time like this.
‘Three days,’ Mudge said.
‘Jesus!’ Now I was really surprised I wasn’t dead. Why hadn’t Rolleston gotten to me? Why hadn’t Rannu killed me, or failing that, the Grey Lady? I looked down at myself. Like Rannu I was covered in medgels and medpaks. The scar on my chest told me that my cracked subcutaneous chest armour had been replaced. I wondered who’d paid for that. It took me a while to get up the courage to look at my right arm. I was relieved to see it had been reattached. Pak-controlled gel running all the way around the join, knitting flesh to metal.
I was in very little pain and an internal diagnostic told me I was still banged up but healing.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Balor,’ Mudge answered. ‘He’s providing shelter for you and your mates, just like he did for me.’
‘He paid for this?’ I asked.
‘More sort of stole it all. Says you’re under his hospitality. He’s got some funny ideas.’
‘But Rolleston ...’ I began.
‘Your friends told me what happened in Hull. This ain’t the Avenues. Rolleston can’t just walk in here.’
‘The Grey Lady can.’ Mudge considered this.
‘Yeah, yeah, she can,’ he admitted, looking down at the bottle he held between his prosthetic legs before looking back up at me. His lenses whirred in their sockets. ‘Your friends tell me you came to New York looking for me.’ I nodded. He gave this some thought. I was suddenly very aware of Rannu in the bed next to me. ‘You trying to get me killed, Douglas?’ Mudge asked evenly.
I began to answer, but as I did the door to the ward opened and Pagan appeared with Morag. Morag was wearing similar clothes to what she’d found in Vicar’s charity bin. A hooded top and combat trousers, but they looked newer and cleaner. Her shaved head now had a covering of light fuzz. I was relieved that her hair was growing back. Pagan looked surprisingly happy to see me awake, or perhaps even alive. Morag smiled and I suddenly felt a lot better.
‘You look a lot better than you did a couple of days ago,’ Pagan said.
No shit, I thought.
‘You okay?’ Morag asked. I held her gaze just a little too long and then nodded. She smiled.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘And can someone get me a gun so we can kill this guy?’ I said, nodding towards Rannu.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Pagan said.
‘He’s with us,’ Morag said. I let this sink in.
‘Says who?’ I asked.
‘We’ve discussed it,’ Pagan said. I couldn’t believe it.
‘That’s great. You trust him? Do you know what he is?’
‘You mean the tattoo?’ Pagan asked. I nodded.
‘I was never a Thug,’ Rannu said from the other bed. I turned to look at him. There was edge in his voice. He’d said Thug with distaste.
‘No? What, you just like the look and the monofilament garrotte?’ I asked.
‘After I left the Regiment I joined the police—’
‘You’re not really filling me with confidence here,’ I said.
‘Jakob!’ Morag said. I turned to her.
‘What?’ I said both angry and surprised.
‘Just listen to him.’
Rannu was waiting patiently for the interruption to be over. ‘They wanted someone with a covert ops background to try and infiltrate the Thugs; I was chosen. High pay, one-off job. I was under for a year getting known in Leicester before they finally let me in.’
‘You must’ve done some bad things,’ I said, perhaps a little pettily. I caught the flinch before his impassive mask returned.
‘Anyway, I made my way up the organisation, getting enough to tear them apart. Getting enough to go after Berham. We were just about ready to go when Rolleston approached me.’
‘About us?’ I asked. Rannu shook his head.
‘About some domestic wetwork. I said I couldn’t. He insisted. I explained the situation. He told me his work was more important. I said no again and he burnt me,’ Rannu said. He said it matter of factly but I could see the emotion beneath
the surface. This guy hated Rolleston as much as I did. Or he was a good actor. I let out a low whistle. To burn someone’s cover while they were deep was just about the cardinal sin in covert ops.
‘How’d it go down?’ I asked.
‘How’d you think? Badly. Lot of dead people. I only just made it out. Two months in hospital being rebuilt and another month in recovery after that.’ I knew that to do that amount of damage they must’ve tortured him.
‘So when Rolleston came to speak to you again you went to work for him?’ I asked. I heard Mudge’s sharp intake of breath. I watched Rannu as he struggled with his composure.
‘You know the score,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much choice.’
‘But now you’re all turned round?’ I asked.
‘Now I appear to have an option,’ he said, looking at Morag. I felt a surge of anger, maybe something else.
‘Good story, but by your own admission you’re an experienced undercover operator. How do we know you’re not just trying to infiltrate us?’ I asked.
‘For what purpose?’ I could see him beginning to get irritated now. ‘I won. Balor will hand you over to me now if I ask him. I already know your plan. I have everything I need to complete my job, so what do I have to gain? I believe the girl can set us free.’ That was weird. Morag was looking down and blushing. I wondered what was going on.
Still red-cheeked, Morag looked up at me and took my hand, the left one, the one that was still flesh.
‘I think he’s on the level,’ she said earnestly.
‘Hooker’s intuition?’ I said before I could stop myself, but she just smiled.
