Veteran

18

Over and over in my head I could hear Shaz’s voice repeating our grid coordinates and requesting, practically begging, for immediate evac. It was more slender than the Berserks; it moved with more grace and it looked more humanoid, more like us. You couldn’t look at it straight on for some reason. It didn‘t seem to make sense that way, some kind of camouflage effect that affected even our sophisticated optics. Fire, realign target, fire, realign target, fire again, reload. It just stalked among us, rarely getting hit, and the few times it did it just seemed to stagger back slightly and then move on.

Mudge went down first. He was behind it, I think, or maybe he was in front and we were behind. I’m not even sure it mattered. I could see the flickering light of Mudge’s AK-47, when the alien just reached out towards him and something black, sharp and slightly impossible-looking detached itself from it at speed and then seemed to accelerate. I watched as Mudge’s AK-47 came apart in his hands and he was thrown off his feet into the air. It looked like the upper left part of his chest was trying to separate from the rest of his body. He seemed to be in the air for ever as I watched him, high on my boosted reflexes, Slaughter and amphetamines. Finally he hit the ground and remained still.

Suddenly the thing was gone again. Shaz had no head, the stump of his neck a brief red fountain before he slumped to his knees and then forward onto the ground. His urgent comms request for an evac still echoed in my head. I fired the remainder of the rounds from my shotgun magazine over Shaz’s body at absolutely nothing.

It was standing next to me. I swung round to face it. It was holding Shaz’s head. For some reason it occurred to me he was studying the head sadly, trying to find answers. I don’t know how I had the time to think of that or where it came from, but it was an impression I couldn’t shake.

The head dropped, forgotten. My shotgun exploded as it swept its claw-like hand through the weapon as if it didn’t exist. The alien pierced a solid breastplate, a hardening inertial undersuit and subcutaneous armour with little apparent effort. I could feel it inside me. Panic made its way through training, conditioning and combat-grade narcotics as its hand split apart into what felt like thousands of tendrils that flailed through my chest cavity.

Gregor was in the air. I’m not sure that made sense to me. The muzzle flash of his PDW seemed welcoming, a friend to me. The impact of the bullets on the alien looked like ripples on the surface of a dark pond. Gregor body-checked the somehow solid alien, knocking it back. Its arm slid out of me. The alien’s liquid flesh had separated into many thin, swaying tendrils that, inanely, reminded me of a sea anemone as I sat down hard on the mud. I had no idea what to do.

Gregor was all but on top of the thing. He scrambled off it, throwing aside his empty PDW and grabbing desperately at the Tyler Optics laser pistol on his right hip. He put himself between the alien and me.

The alien sat up, reconfiguring itself in a way that made my head hurt, as bright red beam after bright red beam stabbed through it, creating greasy black steam. It was like the alien was melting, collapsing in on itself like a mountain of mud, but it was still moving towards Gregor when his laser pistol’s battery ran dry. Gregor flung the weapon at it and reached for his sword bayonet just as the alien surged forward. Part of it seemed to be falling away, dissolving into the murky black puddles of the useless junk genetic code we had come to expect from Them. The rest of it was separating into more thick tendrils. Gregor screamed, a noise I somehow couldn’t connect with him, a noise quickly cut off as a tendril forced itself into his mouth, his eyes, ears and nostrils. I saw his face contort and bulge as his veins stood out, turning to black as the thing forced itself into him. I could make out his skin moving beneath his inertial undersuit. He slumped back into my lap, dead. No, not dead, still breathing. His eyes were solid black pools and all his veins were black also. I stared at him.

‘This is Kilo Two Zero requesting a sitrep from call sign Wild Boys, over.’ Rolleston ‘s calm, well-enunciated voice over the command net was so incongruous as to be meaningless. I had no idea how long I sat there cradling Gregor in my lap. I laid my friend down in the soft mud and stood up, walking over to Shaz as Rolleston repeated his message.

Shaz had no head. He was still dead. Shaz was dead, Gregor may be worse. I was aware, at some level, of movement among the perimeter of Berserks, but they were not approaching yet. They seemed so normal, so commonplace.

Ash, Ash was still dead as well. Didn’t have to worry about Ash, only Gregor, but didn’t want to think about him. I went back to Gregor and closed my eyes, reaching down blindly, every movement causing me to leak more blood from my wounded chest cavity. I couldn’t make sense of the information I was seeing regarding the wound on my internal visual display. I felt the still-hot barrel of Gregor’s laser pistol and picked it up. I opened my eyes and looked at it. I tried to work out what it was and what it meant. Eventually I ejected the spent battery into the mud. I bent down, searching for spare batteries, trying not to look at black eyes and black veins.

Mudge groaned. I felt irritation but that went away when I realised that I would have something to do, something to take my mind off Gregor. Rolleston’s message came across the command net again. He sounded angrier, more demanding, but it was still just ambient noise to me.

Clean the wound. Apply the medgel and a medpak to drive it, then a stim to wake him up. Pain for Mudge as he sits up. A stricken expression on his face as he sees Ash and Shaz and asks me about Gregor. I ignore him. I can’t answer him, wouldn‘t know how. Rolleston’s voice becoming more annoying now. I commit only a little act of treason by giving a journalist access to our command net.

I walk around for a while. Mudge all but has to wrestle me to the ground to get me to lie down. I can feel his hands on and in my chest. All the while he is requesting an immediate evac. I can hear sporadic shard fire. Mudge is hunkered down low over me as he tends my wound. He is still screaming across the comms connection at a Rolleston reluctant to come and get us. Fine, we die here, big surprise.

Heavier shard fire now, Rolleston wants information. Wants to know exactly what happened to Sergeant MacDonald. Mudge isn‘t telling him what he wants to hear. I can hear the Berserks charging across the mud towards us.

‘I don’t know! I wasn’t fucking conscious!’ Mudge shouts.

‘You want to know? You want to know!’ I hear a hysteria-edged voice that isn’t Mudge scream. Everything seems to come into sharp relief. ‘It’s inside him. It forced its way inside him!’ I realise I’m screaming even though the comms connection is sub-vocal. I realise I’m weeping, but it’s dry, no tears when you have machines instead of eyes. I half-heartedly draw Gregor’s laser pistol and take aim towards the Berserks closing in on our position.

Everything stops. There’s a really bright light. It’s sort of blue and white at the same time. Mudge and I are no more than silhouettes now that everything has become a bright circle of light and the ground seems to want to climb into the air. There is no noise. Then there’s a rushing sound and there’s all the noise at once. Am I screaming?

Then I am burnt and blistered and standing, somehow, on a plain of brown glass. Mudge is on his knees close by, crying. I doubt he could tell you why. That sound is the sound of a gunship coming into land. The guitar riff is suitably sombre so it doesn’t jar more than a little bit. I turn and walk towards it. Rolleston and Josephine Bran jump out of the craft with an energy I can barely remember. Rolleston moves quickly to Gregor and begins examining him. I don’t like this and raise the laser. There’s shouting. I’m aware of the miniguns on this side of the gunship swivelling towards me. They are already rotating, up to speed. Buck’s fingers are poised over his fretboard; he’s the most tense I’ve ever seen him. One of the most dangerous people I’ve ever met is pointing a laser carbine at me as well.

Mudge is standing next to me and pushing the laser pistol down, but that’s no use, how will I shoot Rolleston now? I think Mudge is saying something to me. I watch Rolleston move Gregor. easily slinging him over his shoulders and moving him into the gunship, where there’s some kind of small glass technological coffin. It’s not dead, I think, and then correct myself: he’s not dead. Later I’ll realise it’s a secure biohazard isolation chamber.

Gregor’s in the coffin now. Mudge pulls me towards the gunship. telling me we ‘re going home now. Leaving Dog 4. But as we approach the gunship the weapons remain up, covering us. They won’t let us on board. They are businesslike and polite but we are not being let into the gunship. I am actually surprised that Mudge has the energy for a pointless argument, screaming at the gunship as the blast of their take-off forces us backwards.

It’s actually quite beautiful watching the gunship bank towards Sirius Prime, rising massive and seemingly close on the horizon. I realise that despite the thing inside Gregor, I don’t want Rolleston taking my friend away. I wish I’d shot him, in the head, with his own laser – Gregor, I mean.

I woke up screaming. I don’t think anyone noticed. I was hoping to die soon as I didn’t want another day of this. I hung from my frame looking down at the skinheads going about their business as I swayed in the wind, making noises that didn’t sound particularly human to me.

I watched the gate open and a figure walk in. He was wearing a rad duster not unlike the one I used to have. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a mask that had a series of fetishist charms hanging off it. Dreadlocks spilled out of his hat, reaching halfway down his back. That meant something. He walked over to a group of skinheads. They began talking and I saw the dreadlocked figure remove a small pouch from the pocket of his duster. I heard myself start to make what I can only describe as a wet roaring sound. The skinheads and the guy with the dreadlocks and duster looked up at me. He moved closer to me, peering up. It was him all right. Despite feeling like my skin had been flayed off, despite the fact that I barely felt human and definitely had more important things to worry about, I was taken aback by how much rage I felt towards Gibby.

‘Jakob?’ So I was still recognisable, that was something of a relief. I could see insect-eyes emerging from the C amp;C mobile home. He was watching this intently. Gibby turned to the skinheads he’d been dealing with.

‘You need to kill that guy,’ he said. I could’ve sworn I heard a bit of panic in his voice. The skinheads shook their heads, shrugging in a manner befitting low-level thuggery confronted with a problem.

‘Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.’ The pilot flicked open the duster. An ancient Colt Navy.44 he’d added a smartlink to and modified for accuracy and modern ammunition appeared in his hand. Insect-eyes was walking towards us. Gibby cocked the hammer needlessly on the revolver. This would be better.

‘Stop him,’ insect-eyes ordered. A skinhead grabbed Gibby, dragging his gun hand down. Insect-eyes walked up to the restrained pilot and slapped him hard, knocking Gibby’s sunglasses and mask off. Gibby’s head snapped round with the force of the blow. When he turned back I could see the lenses that had replaced his eyes and a look of anger.

‘Who is this?’ insect-eyes demanded, meaning me.

‘You out of your mind, Messer?’ Gibby asked, fixing insect-eyes with a stare. So the little Nazi punk had a name. Messer, I’d have to remember that.

‘I asked you a question,’ Messer said dangerously.

‘Let me go,’ Gibby said. Messer nodded to the skinheads holding him. They let Gibby go but kept him casually covered. Gibby spun the pistol and slid it back into its holster. He pointed up at me.

‘Get rid of him or we will,’ he drawled.

‘You’re in no position to-’ Messer began, but with a final glance at me Gibby stalked out of the compound. He looked scared.

I was fading in and out. Nothing really seemed to hurt any more.

‘I thought it was just skin.’ A voice I recognised from what seemed like long ago. I was in a grotto, a magic cave of ultraviolet magic symbols and medical equipment. I’d been chanted over in a language I didn’t understand though I recognised some of the words. I’d been painted in blood and had things that rattled shaken over me. And then they’d painted new skin on over flesh flayed down to the armour.

‘He’s received a pretty high dose,’ said a voice thick with an accent I’d normally be able to identify.

‘Can’t you do anything for him?’ a worried-sounding Morag said. I tried to say her name but it sounded more like someone drooling themselves to death.

‘He’d need all his systems replaced, internal decontam for his organs, new blood and then only maybe. If we had facilities like that here, Crawling Town would be a much healthier place.’ It was a Caribbean accent of some kind, I decided, proud that I’d worked it out.

‘New York?’ she asked.

‘I checked. Even Balor doesn’t have the gear,’ the first voice said. Pagan, I knew him as well. I felt nauseous.

‘What you want to do?’ the heavily accented voice asked.

‘Patch him up, get him back up on his feet,’ Morag said decisively.

‘Why don’t we just make him comfortable?’ Pagan said. Fuck off, Pagan. Make me comfortable for what?

‘Just do it,’ Morag said.

I remember very little of it. I remember everyone coming in, but most of it I got from Mudge’s viz recording. He thought I’d want to see my rescue. I remember Mudge moving with a narcotic jaunt in his steps, his AK slung across his front. I remember Pagan, staff in hand, looking for all the world like the ancient Druid he so obviously wanted to be. I remember Mrs Tillwater, lilac skirt suit, very smart, the suburban matron from all those soap operas and sitcoms from long ago, except for the dead-skin mask from her last victim, unworn and tucked in the top of her skirt. She’d been an officer in the US Rangers until she’d crucified a column of refugees on Proxima Centauri for refusing to help her platoon hold back a Them advance. Dishonourably discharged, she spent some time in prison, but somehow she had been released and now she ran the First Baptist Church of Austin Texas. Of course I couldn’t forget Big Papa Neon and Little Baby Neon.

Big Papa Neon was perfectly attired in glowing graveyard finery, from top hat to tails. His dreadlocks had glowing circuitry woven into them and left fractal patterns in the air as they moved; one eye was covered by a glowing UV monocle. Like Pagan he carried a staff but it was a stick of pale blue luminescence.

Little Baby Neon was something else altogether. Rumour had it that Little Baby Neon was Papa Neon’s younger brother. Little Baby Neon was huge and mainly made of metal. If there was anything of his original body left I couldn’t see it. He was so augmented that there must’ve been very little remaining of his humanity. We were all estranged from our flesh once we started replacing it. Little Baby Neon was divorced from it. He was to all intents and purposes a machine. I’d heard him called a cyberzombie. There had been a mutiny on Proxima. Papa and Baby Neon and some of their people had deserted the Haitian Marines and hijacked an Earth-bound transport. However, some of Baby Neon’s proclivities had become too much even for the Big Neon Voodoo, and Papa Neon had just kept having ware added to his brother. Baby Neon’s metallic hide was covered in the luminescent sinuous figures of veves. Pop Voudun protection from Papa Neon for his near-mindless brother.

And then of course there was Morag. Wearing a black tunic not unlike the one that Messer wore and trousers that looked damn close to leather. Nobody was wearing his or her hazardous environment gear. No Rannu. Took me a while to realise he’d be out on the town somewhere, covering this little meeting. Also, the presence of the Neons notwithstanding, Rannu being Nepalese probably would’ve excited these throwbacks. It was thinking along those lines that made me realise that Morag with her recently shaved head and new costume could’ve passed for one of these fucks.

I hadn’t wanted her to see me like this. Pagan had glanced up at me, Mudge hadn’t, and neither had Morag. She was striding across the Nazi compound like she owned it and she looked angry. There was something very un-Morag about her. If she was acting then she was doing a very good job. Later I would realise that all the time that she was working on the Forbidden Pleasure she would’ve been playing a role. I watched as Messer and a group of his skinheads met Morag and the others.

The rest I got from Mudge’s recording. His camera eyes were mounted on stabilised balls to compensate for the movement of his head, but even so it was a strange first-person perspective. Mudge was striding forward, Morag just in front to his right and Pagan on the other side of her, walking with the Neons and Mrs Tillwater. According to Mudge, Pagan was on very good terms with the Neons, and Mrs Tillwater had been asked to come along because the Wait respected her all-white gang of serial killers, despite them being Baptists. Pagan had friends. Indeed he seemed to be walking with the lords and ladies of Crawling Town.

I saw Messer gesture towards Mudge’s eyes. One of the skinheads moved forward, holding his hands up to block Mudge’s recording. Mudge grabbed the skinhead’s hand and twisted it, forcing the skinhead to bend forward at the waist. Mudge had his Regiment-issue SIG Full Auto in his hand. He pushed the barrel into the skinhead’s shorn skull and looked straight at Messer. The other skinheads brought their weapons to bear. Pagan and the Neons stopped and Mrs Tillwater kept walking around Messer and the group of skinheads, flanking them. From Mudge’s perspective I could see she was carrying an M-19 ACR, the standard assault rifle of the US Army.

Morag, however, kept walking. She walked right up to Messer and backhanded him hard enough to draw blood from his stained purple lips. Watching the recording I was somewhat taken aback by this. Mudge was chuckling, but when Messer turned round I could see that she’d managed to make him lose his composure. Needless to say there were a lot of gun barrels being pointed at her. So she slapped him again. Watching this played back, I burst out laughing. I laughed so much I threw up blood. Messer’s face was now a mask of rage.

‘You are a disgrace to your race!’ Morag spat at him. I watched his eyes widen and the crystal of his multi-faceted eyes turn red. I realised Morag’s strong Dundonian accent had gone.

Who are you, woman, to come here with niggers and say that to me?’ Messer demanded, his voice shaking with fury. Baby Neon stepped forward but Papa Neon laid a hand on him and muttered something in patois that I didn’t understand. It was an interesting approach to negotiation – not sure I would’ve taken it.

‘We being niggers or not, you need to remember where you are, boy,’ Papa Neon said. A lot of the skinheads were spending their time looking nervously between Baby Neon and Mrs Tillwater. Morag softened and stepped in, running her hand down Messer’s face, causing him to flinch.

‘You are a good soldier, Messer,’ she said and then pointed at me. Mudge glanced up. I was a mess. ‘But that is mine and I want it back,’ she said, and then she became all coquettish. ‘And if I don’t get it you will make my masters very unhappy.’ Then she grabbed the skin on the side of his face and was all authoritarian again. ‘Do you understand me?’ Messer looked over at Mrs Tillwater.

‘Mrs Tillwater?’ It was clear that despite Mrs Tillwater being a member of the weaker sex, according to this guy’s fucked-up ideology, she was seen as a kindred soul. It was kind of pathetic really. It was all the more pathetic that these violent little children had taken me down.

‘Well it’s up to you, Messer,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was addressing a Sunday school lesson. ‘But if I were you I’d do what the nice young lady asks.’ I didn’t like the look on her face though. It was as if she wanted to see something. Messer pointed up at me.

‘That is my gift to God,’ he snarled. That upset me; I liked John Coltrane.

‘The gods have other uses for that one,’ Pagan said. Messer’s head snapped round to look at his fellow hacker. I could sense Messer appraising the bizarre tattooed and pierced figure he saw in front of him.

‘And you are?’ Messer asked.

‘Pagan.’ Mudge did a close-up reaction shot of Messer. I could see the punk Nazi’s eyes widen round the red crystalline lenses. He’d heard of Pagan. Pagan held Messer’s stare. You could tell that hacker patriarch was a role he felt comfortable with. It was a bit like watching Messer get spanked. ‘Your god is coming and when it does all the niggers will feel his wrath,’ Pagan said, though it was obvious he was trying to master his distaste. Papa Neon looked over at Pagan with an expression of amusement on his face.

‘The space niggers as well,’ Messer said, looking up at the sky, though mostly all he would see was dust. He was sounding more and more like a desperate child. Mudge had to stifle a laugh as Pagan nodded benevolently.

‘The space niggers as well,’ Pagan said. This was clearly a ridiculous ideology that Messer had discovered. It was difficult to imagine anyone ever having taken this seriously.

Morag sauntered up to Messer, seemingly oblivious to the guns covering her. She stepped behind him and, smiling, leant forward to whisper in his ear.

‘Let me have him back,’ she whispered. It seemed to me that Messer actually flinched. I found out why later: the whisper was the signal for Pagan to send him an encrypted message saying that if he didn’t release me they were going to take me anyway and his people would lose all their respect for him. The only thing he could really do was try and save as much face as possible. I could see him looking between Papa Neon and Pagan. They were the two big-name hackers there. He knew he was outclassed.

‘Conflict is good – it feeds Ogu Bodagris – but boy, you push too hard, both here and in the spirit world. You need to calm yourself,’ Papa Neon said. I could see Messer swallow like he wanted to say something but had decided against it. He ordered me to be taken down.

I saw myself being got down, barely able to stand. Mudge was helping me. Somehow I managed to walk aided by Mudge. I didn’t remember this, but as I walked past him I grabbed Messer. I was holding myself up by my bloody grip on his tunic.

‘I’m going to kill every single last one of you,’ I managed to mumble. Messer said nothing as Mudge pulled me off him.

The rest of the viz was me being carried by Mudge and Mrs Tillwater to the back of a pickup truck and driven through the transient streets of Crawling Town. We stopped to pick up Rannu from where he’d been watching my rescue along the barrel of a gun. The ex-Ghurkha glanced at me but said nothing. I noticed that Pagan had fortunately had the presence of mind to retrieve my personal belongings from the Wait. They took me to one of the Day-Glo articulated lorries that belonged to the Big Neon Voodoo. Morag was shaking like a leaf.

‘You did fine,’ Pagan told her. Mudge mumbled his agreement. The back of the lorry they had brought me to was a garishly decorated infirmary. I must’ve been hallucinating by this point because Mrs Tillwater was wearing her mask of somebody’s flayed face.

‘Welcome to America,’ the grinning mask told me. I may have screamed.