Veteran

4

The Forbidden Pleasure was neither all that forbidden nor pleasurable. It had once been a container ship. Most of the containers had been scavenged long ago to create what I liked to think of as the upper-class neighbourhood on the Rigs. The remaining containers of the horribly corroded three-hundred-year-old craft had been sectioned off with cardboard walls and turned into a production-line-style knocking shop. This was the place where the inhabitants of the Rigs came to experience the meat.

The bridge had been stripped out long ago, non-supporting bulkheads cut through and the whole deck converted into some impoverished idea of what a lounge bar was supposed to be. It was a sick joke. A taunt to the people forced to live on the Rigs. I climbed up the metal stairs to the bridge deck. I dampened my enhanced hearing to drown out the grunts, sighs, the faked orgasms and the screams of pain. I was trying not to think about how working here or in one of the other flesh parlours in the Rigs was one of the few chances to make a living the young on the Rigs had. Though they were used up quickly.

I tried to slip into the bar on the bridge deck as inconspicuously as possible, but my long coat and the way you move with reflexes as wired as mine gave me away. I eased into one of the high chairs at the bar, aware of eyes burning into my back. The bridge bar was for the high-rollers, by the standards of the Rigs. The rest just took their turn at the turnstiles in the lottery-like system on the foredeck. The security was violent young men and women with cheap ware and assault rifles.

The boys and girls in the bar were the youngest and freshest, the least damaged. The badly chalked menu above the bar suggested that you could pretty much do to them what you wanted as long as you had the money. I couldn’t see Cassidy but there was a lot of his muscle in the bar. Young crazies with too much cheap ware, bad drugs and weapons they did not know how to use. Most of them would be draft dodgers. Too dangerous to recruit by the time their number came up or, rather, more trouble than they were worth. The rest were clients, mainly the entrepreneurial class of the Rigs. Dealers of whatever they could find to deal – drugs, booze, smokes, medicines, weapons, space and life.

At one table sat a corporate salary man, quite a high-ranking one judging by his retinue of guards. He was slumming. He was probably here to snuff someone. His katana, the badge of office for corporate swordsmen, lay sheathed on the table in front of him. I wondered how many people he had slain with that sword in promotion and tender duels to get where he was today. I had a pretty good idea about how this was going to go down and I resented that I would become anecdote fodder for the slumming salary man. There was the sound of automatic weapons fire from the foredeck. I had my hand on the butt of my laser pistol before I thought about it. I hadn’t been wired this high in a while. Nobody else flinched. Nothing new, just another example being made.

‘Drink?’ I looked up at the barman. He was a vet. One arm missing where they had removed a prosthetic when he had been discharged, the other hugely muscled from illegal boosters, stimulants and overcompensation. His eyes were cheap Coventry-made implants. Probably replacements for the military-grade ones he’d had removed. The angry red scar tissue around the eyes pointed to a botched job. The implants were probably painful with low resolution.

‘Have you got anything nice to drink?’ I asked optimistically. The barman smiled ironically and shook his head. ‘Anything that’s safe to drink?’

‘Not so much,’ the barman answered, his accent broad Dundonian. I put some dirty paper euros on the bar.

‘Have a drink yourself and I’ll have one of whatever you dare to drink.’ The barman gave a snort of amusement and came back a minute or so later with two dirty glasses containing a murky liquid. I raised my glass to him.

‘To slipping standards,’ I said, and tipped the contents down my throat trying desperately not to taste it. I think it was supposed to have been whisky, though the aftertaste of turpentine gave it away a bit. I grimaced and looked at the glass.

‘Takes the edge off, doesn’t it?’ the barman said.

‘It’s an acquired taste,’ I said as politely as I could manage.

‘I know you?’ the barman asked, and he would do. As an unspoken rule when you moved onto the Rigs you had to prove that you were more trouble than it was worth to mess with. If you didn’t you were going to end up spending all your time fending off chop merchants wanting to sell you for second-hand mil-spec ware. So when I moved in there had been a few strategic deaths and acts of violence on my part to ensure I got left in peace. I shrugged off the barman’s question.

‘Cassidy about?’ I asked. The barman started to answer.

‘Who wants to know about Mr MacFarlane?’ a voice that was all street bravado asked from behind me. I glanced round and saw what I guessed would be the first abject example of the night. He was young and had something to prove. I bit back my initial sarcastic retort. The over-revved street muscle was stripped to the waist to display the operation scars for lots of new muscle. He was also high on some kind of combat drug, judging by his jitters, and of course his watching peers were implicitly egging him on. In the waistband of his combat trousers was an automatic of a calibre too large to be of any practical use except to intimidate or hunt big game.

‘My name is Jakob Douglas and I have a very important proposition for MacFarlane.’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’ the young muscle asked.

I shrugged but said nothing.

‘Well?’ the muscle said, slightly confusing me.

‘Sorry, I thought the question was rhetorical. I don’t know, is the answer.’ The muscle was not quite sure how to take this. I cursed myself. I’d made this guy feel stupid, which would in turn lead to anger, which would in turn lead to me having to kill him.

‘Look, son, I know your story and I know your life. I know what you’re doing and I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to see MacFarlane and make my offer.’ The muscle looked amused. He turned to his audience of fellow toughs.

‘He’s worried about hurting me,’ he said, laughing. None of his friends laughed. I tried again, desperately trying to keep this boy alive for no good reason I could think of.

‘Let me guess, you’ve got some scary-sounding street name like Razors, Deathboy or Heed-the-Ball.’

‘Cordite.’

‘I don’t want to know what it is. I’m just telling you about your life in an attempt to lengthen it and save myself some trouble.’

‘Listen to him, boy,’ the barman said. ‘He’s special forces, or was.’ I said nothing, just watching, hating the inevitability of this.

‘So what? You vets are all piss and wind…’ Cordite found himself looking down the barrel of the Mastodon.

‘Mine’s bigger than yours,’ I said. ‘Now what you’re feeling is peer-group pressure. You can’t back down because you’re being watched by the people you’re trying to impress, and it will be humiliating if you don’t do anything.’

Though I knew it would be worse than humiliating. This boy’s career was over. He was going from predator to prey in the Rigs’ food chain after this. Somewhere in Cordite’s drug-addled mind he realised this too. I read the movement in body language almost before it happened. I felt the world of the bridge bar slowing down until it was like everyone else was moving through thick mud as my reflexes kicked in. I let everyone see that Cordite was going for his gun. I even let him touch the weapon before I pulled the trigger, already shaking my head sadly as I did. The two feet of muzzle flash scorched Cordite’s dermal chest armour. My audio dampening kicked in, compensating for the deafening roar of the oversized revolver. In what seemed like slow motion to me, I watched the bullet pierce the boy’s armour, enter the chest cavity, pick him up off his feet, and then the explosive charge in the bullet detonated, sending liquefied and scorched parts of his internal organs squirting out of the entry wound.

I lowered the enormous smoking pistol as Cordite hit the ground. Many of the other muscle had their hands on their weapons, including the salary man’s guard. The salary man was just watching me with casual interest. Anecdote fodder. I looked down sadly at the corpse I’d just made. Ignoring the threat of the rest of MacFarlane’s security in the bar, I opened the chamber of my revolver, took out the spent round, pocketed the smoking cartridge and replaced it with a new, loose round from my pocket before holstering the pistol.

I looked around the bar. Changing to low light, I saw the table at the back. The fat-looking guy, ostentatiously sporting his wealth, smoking a cigar, decadent make-up, and wearing fashion ware, the two prettiest girls in the bar with him and guards who did not look like they had their heads stuck up their arses.

‘You have your sacrifice,’ I said angrily. ‘You going to listen to me now?’ MacFarlane took a drag of his cigar. The cherry flaring up illuminated the white-painted skin of his fleshy, bearded face, his red-gloss lips and dark eyes.

‘Natural selection,’ he said, nodding towards Cordite’s body. ‘Thank you for culling my herd.’

‘I don’t have to stop there,’ I said and then cursed myself for such an obvious response.

‘You do in a room full of my men. You may get a few but you’re still a dead man.’ MacFarlane was smiling, pulling one of the girls in closer to himself, presumably to use as a shield if it came to that.

I began calculating my plan of attack. The order the muscle in this room would die.

‘I don’t think you’re right, but it’ll mean fuck all to you because you go first,’ I said evenly. I was beginning to find this macho bullshit tiring. MacFarlane gave this some thought.

‘So you don’t want to speak to me?’ he asked sardonically, apparently enjoying himself. I just sighed, deciding to be quiet until somebody said something worthwhile or I had to start shooting people.

‘What do you want?’ MacFarlane asked, apparently growing bored.

‘You bought something from a park rang-’ I managed to get out.

‘Kill him,’ MacFarlane said. Oh for fuck’s sake, I thought as the world around me slowed down again. The Mastodon was in my right hand, the laser in my left. A ruby-red beam joined the muzzle of the laser pistol to one of MacFarlane’s bodyguards as he tried to stand up. There was the sharp bang of exploding superheated air molecules and a scream from the guard as some of his flesh became red steam.

I swung the Mastodon under my extended left arm and pulled the trigger. The huge revolver round caught one of MacFarlane’s men as he tried to bring a sub-machine gun to bear. The bullet hitting him with such force it blew him through the bridge window and sent him tumbling to the deck below. My shoulder-mounted laser pushed itself through the break-open panel on my long coat. The split-screen targeting system appeared on my internal visual display, imposing crosshairs on the two gunmen diving for cover behind the bar. The laser hit one of them in mid-air; the second gunman managed to get behind the bar. The shoulder laser tracking him took an informed guess as to where he was and fired again, the ruby beam stabbing through the bar. There was a howl of pain.

Guided by the smartgun link, I fired the Tyler twice more at MacFarlane’s two remaining guards, catching one in the temple, turning the back of his head into a steaming mess on the wall. MacFarlane was screaming, trying to use the two terrified girls as cover. The other guard tumbled out of the way. I’d underestimated him, or his ware anyway.

I swung to the left. The two gunmen at the table by the broken window were trying to bring their weapons to bear. The Mastodon fired again, catching one of them in the chest, and three bright red beams fired in quick succession took the other one down.

Then things became interesting for me as low-calibre, high-velocity, rapidly fired rounds began impacting on my long coat. Most of their kinetic energy was absorbed but a few of them were making their way through to my dermal plating. I started running and dived behind the bar. Trying to work out where the fire was coming from. I landed hard behind the bar. Bottles exploded, showering me in cheap unpleasant booze.

Looking up I found the gunman who had dived over the bar previously, whimpering. He was clutching a wounded leg where half of his thigh had been seared off by my shoulder-mounted laser’s blind fire. Moving more on instinct and boosted reflexes than anything else, I let the Mastodon drop to the floor and reached forward, my right metallic hand a clenched fist. The four nine-inch knuckle blades extended from their housing. They pierced the top of the wounded gunman’s skull and drove down with such force that his facial features contorted. I retracted the blades in a spray of blood, bones and grey matter and picked up my revolver again.

Moving through the visual spectrum to thermographics, I looked through the bar to see who was shooting at me. I saw an orange blossom of muzzle flash from the table where the salary man had been sitting. The bodyguards had decided that I was a threat to their employer. The red beam of my laser seared my thermographic vision momentarily as I burned through the bar and into the salary man’s head. There was a cessation in the gunfire.

‘Your client’s safe now!’ I shouted angrily. ‘Mind your own fucking business!’ There was no return fire. The heat outlines of the salary man’s bodyguards told me they were staying in cover, their guns cooling.

I stood up. Further down the bar the barman was watching me. He inclined his head toward the port stairway to the bridge. Filtering through the noise I heard boots ringing off metal stairs. I was still worried about the whereabouts of MacFarlane’s remaining bodyguard. I’d somehow managed to lose track of him.

I ignored the wild shot from MacFarlane’s underpowered but still very fashionable, last year, automatic pistol. Walking to the doorway, still using my thermographics, I was suddenly treated to the silhouetted spectacle of mass, impoverished rutting. The containers were giving off a lot of heat into the summer night air. However, I had more pressing matters as reinforcements came pounding up the stairs. I reached the top of the stairs and began firing down with both the revolver and the laser. Firing rapidly but accurately thanks to the smartgun links. Shooting through one gunman to get the one behind him. My shoulder laser stabbed out repeatedly into the containers at those guards who thought sniping would be a safer option. Glass exploded around me and a few bullets hit my coat, penetrating but being stopped painfully by my dermal armour.

The firing stopped and I swung back behind part of the bulkhead, both my weapons hot and empty. The speed and strength of the wired and boosted enhanced kick that caught me in the side of the face had sufficient force to spin me round. It was rank amateurishness on my part that the kick had caught me out. Then the other guy made a mistake. He did not press his advantage.

I tried to shake off the ringing in my head and looked up at my opponent. MacFarlane’s final guard wore a knock-off expensive suit that was big enough to allow him to move. He had no hair at all anywhere on his gleaming skull. A few tattoos crept up past his collar line. His movements suggested that his ware was top-notch and he actually had skill. He was bouncing easily on the balls of his feet, his hands in a lazy guard. This was MacFarlane’s showpiece fighter, his fashionable martial artist, the best reactions, muscle and skills that the street economy could provide.

‘Square go?’ MacFarlane’s pet martial artist asked. Tradition, see? It didn’t matter that we both had high-end skills developed initially in the Far East, this was still Dundee. I should have shot him, but I looked around at the carnage I had wrought on my own, just me, nobody else. I felt the buzz. I holstered my guns. The combat high stupidly making me feel invincible. My shoulder laser tucked itself away.

The fighter smiled and threw something at me as I began moving, but he was wired almost as well as I was. The lighter hit me and I went up in flames from all the cheap booze I had been covered in. Was this supposed to stop me? It wouldn’t even hurt until I slowed down. Red warning symbols had come up on my visual display as I moved towards my opponent. MacFarlane’s martial artist swung out with his fist at me. I spun out of its way.

One of the first things I’d been taught in the SAS is that you never use a kick in a serious fight. They’re too slow and anyone who knew what they were doing would take you down before your foot got anywhere near them. However my mother had brought me up to use Muay Thai, and I was wired, and I was angry and I was on fire.

The spinning roundhouse kick hooked into the back of the boosted martial artist’s skull. Staggering him, the flames forcing him to move out of the way. A side kick to the torso knocking him further back. I slapped his counter-attack out of the way, vaguely aware that my hair was on fire now. I leapt into the air, my burning knee catching the martial artist hard under the chin. He flew back, and while still in mid-air I extended my leg out and kicked him in the chest.

Landing, I closed the distance and elbowed him on either side of his head. He tried to recover, kicking me, but I raised my leg to block him and then kicked him in the knee. The knee broke and he hit the ground. As he tried to get up I kicked him in the sternum, flipping him over. My claws went through his chest and into the metal floor beneath him.

I stood up. Despite dampened nerves and internal painkillers, the flames were becoming too much. The chemical retardant of the fire extinguisher came as a welcome release. The barman put the extinguisher back beneath the bar. On the bar was a dirty glass of the same muck we’d drunk earlier. I picked it up, knocked it back and made a disgusted noise.

The coat was a little blackened but would be fine. My jeans were mostly destroyed and my skin was burnt down to the dermal armour on the bottom part of my legs. My left hand and much of my face had been burnt. My hair was a burnt brittle mess coming away in clumps. This burnt visage was what MacFarlane saw as I made my way towards him, slowly reloading my guns. The remaining patrons and hookers in the bar just lay low as I passed. Some of them whimpered, but most were used to scenes like this.

I stood over MacFarlane, still smoking gently. One of the girls had managed to escape but the other one MacFarlane was using as a shield, the pretty gun in his other hand. The pimp was lying between the table and the couch he had been sat on. Not for the first time I wondered how people like this managed to control all the psychopaths they had working for them. I pulled a chair out and sat down, lighting a cigarette, the flickering flames illuminating my ruined face. MacFarlane was desperately trying to think of a way out.

‘That’s illegal ware. You’re boosted way to high. They’ll kill you for that, you know, take you down. CSWAT will be on their way.’

‘I’m working. Let her go,’ I said, meaning the terrified sixteen-year-old girl. MacFarlane seized on this. He put the little gun to her head.

‘Yeah, yeah. Walk out of here or I’ll kill her.’

‘Chivalry is alive and well in Dundee,’ I said sarcastically. MacFarlane did not seem to understand. I sighed and fixed him with a stare. I’d been told that black lenses had the effect of making their owners look like soulless monsters. An effect probably further heightened by my burnt appearance. I pointed the Mastodon at the pair on the floor. ‘Come to terms with your death because you have sent a lot better men before you,’ I said to him. ‘I don’t care about some stranger’s death. It just seems to be a waste to me, so decide if she’s going with you.’ The girl started crying, racking sobs shaking her body. MacFarlane considered my words. He let her go and she scrambled away. It was probably the single best act he had ever done in his life.

‘Where is it?’ I asked MacFarlane.

‘In the stateroom,’ MacFarlane said, overcome with hopelessness.

‘The what?’ I asked.

‘The captain’s cabin. Two decks down, you can’t miss it. It’s the nicest cabin, the fucking captain’s cabin.’ I got up and then stopped.

‘What did you want it for?’ I asked, still assuming that there was some kind of suicidal Them fifth-column cult on Earth. MacFarlane seemed confused at the question.

‘Well, I was going to pimp it,’ he said, as if that was obvious. I let this sink in and started to laugh. MacFarlane looked pissed off that I was laughing at his grand business plan.

‘I could have charged a fortune to let people come here and fuck one of those things, just like they fucked us,’ he said defiantly.

‘You idiot,’ I managed between the laughter. ‘It’s a biological machine designed for killing.’

‘We could have cut holes in it,’ MacFarlane said defensively. This only made me laugh harder. Small men, small ideas, I thought.

‘You mean you are confronted with something from another planet, a completely alien species, and all you can think to do with it is fuck it?’ I asked. MacFarlane obviously did not like being laughed at and was becoming angry despite the danger.

‘What’s so funny? People will pay to fuck anything…’ The report of the Mastodon was very loud in the bridge. MacFarlane slumped to the ground. I exhaled smoke, all trace of amusement gone. I looked at the corpse of the pimp for a moment and then stood up.

‘Mister?’ a timid voice said. I turned to look at the frightened girl MacFarlane had used as a shield. I didn’t answer her. Instead I reached down and searched MacFarlane until I found the pimp’s money roll. ‘You’re wrong, you know,’ the girl said. I peeled off some of the dirty euros and offered them to her. She snatched them out of my hand and I pocketed the rest.

‘Yeah? About what?’ I asked.

‘About it being a killer.’ I turned to look at her. ‘It’s not a killer, it’s beautiful,’ she said. I had no idea what she was talking about but something about her earnestness bothered me. I headed towards the internal stairs that would take me down to see one of the monsters that had killed so many of my friends. Was it psychologically healthier to want to have sex with an alien or just kill it? I wondered. You’d hope it depended on the circumstances.