Veteran

5

Despite the ruin of my face I was feeling no pain as I edged my way down the stairway deeper into the ship. The subdued lighting and peeling red paint were a long-forgotten attempt at ambience, but now, to my drug-addled brain, they gave the place an other-worldly feel.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. My hearing could pick up the sound of heavy breathing around the corner, the sound of nervous people shifting. I looked through thermographics but warm pipes and a multitude of people in surrounding rooms confused the images. I peeked around the corner and brought my head straight back as two nervous gunmen let rip with SMGs loaded with slugs too high a velocity for the weapons. The bullets ripped through the bulkhead where I’d been standing and continued on their path. I heard a scream. One of the stray bullets had caught a working boy somewhere deeper in the ship. I had retreated part the way back up the stairs.

‘It’s all over,’ I shouted. ‘Everyone’s dead. MacFarlane’s dead, you’re not working for anyone any more. Just walk away.’ There was a discussion between them as to the merits of my offer.

‘Bullshit, man!’ One of them shouted. ‘You’re government, you’re going to kill everyone who came into contact with it.’

‘Then why haven’t I?’ I asked, wondering why people made it so hard for me not to kill them. ‘Look it’s up to you, either you die here now or you take your chances and walk away.’ There was another discussion followed by the sounds of feet pounding metal. I glanced around the corner; both the gunmen had gone.

Leaning against the bulkhead, I replaced the shells in the Mastodon with disrupter rounds. They were specifically designed to inflict the most damage on the liquid flesh technology of Their bioborg killers. My hand was shaking. I was afraid. I had spent so much time Earth side, where nothing was frightening compared to the war. I’d forgotten what the fear was like.

The last time I’d faced a Ninja I had been armed to the teeth, pumped on combat drugs, aided by my squad, and many of them still ended up dead, not to mention the weirdness that happened to Gregor. If this was one of their Ninjas then it had better be very injured or I was screwed. It was then I heard movement from the next corridor.

Looking around the corner, I saw about twenty of the more upmarket (by rig standards) hookers heading into what I assumed was the captain’s cabin. Angry johns were following some of them. I pinched the bridge of my nose, crushing burnt skin; vague signals of pain pushed their way through the drugs and the nerve dampening. Unsure what to do, I made my way down the corridor, straight-arming one of the johns, who was trying to drag a teenage boy back to a cabin by the hair. I pushed my way through the hookers, a task made easier by my frightening burnt appearance, to the door of the stateroom.

It was definitely one of Them lying on the cabin bed. Manacles that presumably had been shackling him lay on the floor now. It was the most human-looking one I had ever seen. It was like a human-shaped and proportioned pool of oil, its head a smooth featureless black dome. There were no visible weapon appendages apparent but I knew that Their Ninjas were morphic. In terms of apparent physiology the only real difference was it had seven long fingers on both hands and it looked slightly smaller than the average human. The light formed rainbow-like reflections in its flesh and I could make out a distorted view of myself – for the first time I could see the burn damage.

I watched my reflection extend the revolver towards the alien. The hookers rushed to the creature and surrounded it, forming a shield between it and me. As they touched it some of its reactive liquid flesh solidified. Their touch also caused ripples all over it, like pebbles dropped in a dark stream. I’d seen this before. The black liquid on the floor and the cot meant it was injured. Good, I thought. The thing was moving, trying to push its human shield away.

‘Get out the way,’ I ordered tersely. The hookers did not move though they looked terrified. ‘Now!’ I roared. Many of them jumped, a couple of them started crying softly. The tears made me feel like shit. These people were among the lowest on the food chain. The exploited’s exploited and they had nowhere to go but down as they became more and more used up. It was why I’d always preferred the artifice of the sense booths. This didn’t stop me from pulling back the hammer on the revolver, largely an affectation but it was intimidating. More were crying but they did not move; they seemed ready to die for this thing. I wondered if this was some kind of phermonic effect, a form of psychological warfare or mind control that the wounded alien had used to influence the prostitutes.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked softly, though the revolver did not waver. I wanted this bad day over with.

‘Please don’t kill him,’ said one of the prostitutes, a boy whose age I did not want to guess.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘It’s not a bad thing,’ replied one of the other hookers, a slightly older girl. She was not crying, though she looked scared, but her life had probably used up all her tears. She was pretty. The kind of pretty that wouldn’t make her pimp want to put her under a laser to turn her into a sleazier version of whoever that week’s face was and then have her work off her debt for the surgery. She had a bob of black hair, freckles and pretty brown eyes. I looked at her, though the revolver’s smartlink enabled me to keep aiming at the Ninja on the cot.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you think you know, but I’ve seen these things before and they just want to kill humans. It’s doing something to you. I’m not sure what, but whatever it is, it’s not real. I can give you some money but you need to get out of the way.’

‘Have you ever spoken to one before?’ the girl asked. I groaned inwardly. My initial interest was giving way to irritation. To make matters worse, the comms icon on my visual display started winking. The Major was trying to get through.

‘They don’t communicate with humans; all they want to do is kill. Do you understand?’ I told the girl.

‘This one talks,’ the girl said. I was lost for words. I’d never heard of this happening before. Not to the air force’s Space Command first contact team that was initially murdered by the genocidal aliens, nor at any point during the war. I took Rolleston’s call while deciding what to do next. An image of the Major appeared in a small box at one side of my visual display.

‘You’ve found it.’ It was more of a statement than a question.

‘Yes,’ I sub-vocalised.

‘Neutralised it?’ the Major asked.

‘Not yet.’ The digital representation of the Major looked troubled momentarily.

‘Problems?’ he asked.

‘Of a sort.’

‘Of what sort?’ the Major asked, becoming impatient.

‘Collateral,’ I answered. I knew the lack of information would infuriate the Major.

‘Neutralise them as well,’ he ordered.

‘I’m not shooting a sixteen-year-old girl,’ I answered. The prostitutes surrounding the wounded alien were aware that I was having a sub-vocal conversation but their protective encirclement remained firm.

‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ the Major growled.

‘If you didn’t want me to do this my way, why bother getting me to do it in the first place? After all, Bran’s here on the ground.’ The Major looked like he was about to issue more orders, probably backed with threats that I would have had to take seriously. Working on the principle that it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission, I thanked the angry-looking Major for his call and broke the link.

I switched my attention back to the girl.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘My real name or what we tell the customers?’ she asked, trying to use bravado to overcome her fear and failing.

‘Whichever.’

‘Morag, Morag McGrath.’ I assumed it was her real name and briefly wondered who would call their child Morag in this day and age.

‘Okay, Morag, let’s hear what it has to say,’ I said.

‘You can’t hear it,’ she said. ‘You don’t have enough flesh.’ Nice, I thought. If the girl was to be believed, a member of an alien race that wanted to wipe out humanity was questioning my humanity. On the other hand, very few of the hookers had any form of cybernetics. They couldn’t afford it, and most of their customers wanted smooth flesh, not hard metal and plastic. I smiled.

‘That’s convenient, Morag. How’s it talking to you and your friends?’ I asked.

‘It’s like a tickle.’ It would seem that Morag was now the spokesperson for both the alien and the rest of the prostitutes. Morag seemed to be thinking about what she was going to say next. ‘Back here,’ she said after some consideration, touching the back of her head.

What the fuck was going on? It was almost like a cult. It had to be exerting control over them. Perhaps they were more susceptible because of their youth. The problem was at any moment Bran was going to turn up and kill everyone.

‘Okay, Morag, you’ve seen the vizzis, yes? Them, the aliens who attack us and are trying to wipe us out, the war we’ve been fighting for the last sixty years, a war for survival, yes?’ She nodded.

‘Well that,’ I said, nodding towards the alien, ‘is one of them. An infiltrator, what we call a Ninja, and it is here to kill someone, and I have to stop it. What it’s doing is called mind control. I’m afraid I’m going to have to move you and get on with it. If you can leave the room, you should. I’ll try not to hurt any of you.’ As one they all wrapped themselves around the wounded alien, causing ripples in its wounded physiology. All except Morag.

‘No,’ Morag said, suddenly sounding more confident. I looked at the human shield and then Morag. Wonderful, I thought to myself.

‘So you’ve been in this thing’s presence for a couple of hours and you’re ready to die for it?’ I asked.

‘It’s hope.’ The girl turned to the alien. ‘No,’ she said, tears beginning to well in her eyes for the first time since I’d entered the room. The young prostitutes began disentangling themselves from the alien lying on the cot. Now all of them were crying. Morag turned to me. ‘It doesn’t understand why you could hurt a member of your own race. It doesn’t understand why we’re treated like this. It doesn’t understand why everyone does not have as much food and safety as everyone else,’ she said through the tears. I didn’t really have an answer. My childhood had been bliss compared to hers and her only way off the Rigs was the draft lottery.

Now I had a clear shot at the alien, I aimed. Once more I caught sight of my distorted burnt features reflected in the black pool of its body. We both looked like monsters. It did not matter if it was talking to the kids, controlling them, I had to kill it, like so many others, to get the Major off my back and return to normality. The fights, the races, the booze and the sense booths, my normality. I lowered my gun.

‘Okay,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Ask it why They fight us.’ Morag seemed to think for a while.

‘Defence,’ she said finally.

‘Bollocks.’ I raised the revolver and started to squeeze the trigger. Then I relaxed and gently pushed the hammer down and lowered the gun. I’m still not sure I could tell you why. I just wasn’t in the presence of malevolence, and it was my instinct telling me this. The instinct that had come with the original meat, not the metal and plastic I had become. There was audible relief from the prostitutes.

‘Thank you,’ Morag said.

‘Great, just great,’ I said. What the fuck was I doing? This was treason. I was siding with an enemy I hated and who wanted to destroy me and everyone who looked like me. And why was I doing this? I was doing this because of the say-so of a few cheap rig whores.

I was sure I was being mind-controlled or this was part of some new psychological strategy of Theirs. But the people telling me not to kill the alien were people I had no reason to distrust. The man telling me to kill the alien I neither liked nor trusted. The scale of it was terrifying: it was too big and I couldn’t possibly take responsibility for this.

The touch of the thing on my burnt skin was disgusting. It was like some kind of abrasive vinyl substance just beneath the surface of black water. It was not that it was an unpleasant sensation I was receiving from tactile feedback sensors and the few remaining nerves that hadn’t been burnt, it was just what the thing rippling in my arms represented what I’d seen its brethren do. Colonial township after colonial township, their civilian populations completely butchered regardless of age, nobody spared, their remains displayed in warning. Villages that seemed to be painted in human flesh, fences made of human skin.

I couldn’t explain what I was doing, why I was carrying this thing to the Forbidden Pleasure’s helicopter pad, where MacFarlane’s aircar was parked. I was still assuming it was mind control. Nor did I have the slightest idea of what I was intending to do with it. Morag walked with me.

‘What are you doing?’ I growled.

‘I’m coming with you, Mister.’ I really didn’t have time for this. I turned round to the girl, and she looked up at me, brown eyes wide and wet.

‘A lot of bad people are going to be coming for me-’

‘But they’ll come here first,’ she said. She had a point.

‘I’ll drop you somewhere,’ I said and continued towards the aircar. She had to jog to keep up. The lock burner opened the car and I placed the alien across the back seat. Morag climbed into the passenger seat. The Saab smelt damp and faintly of shit and blood. People had been hurt in it. I overrode its security before starting it up and jacking into the car’s system. I didn’t like some of the diagnostics I was seeing on my internal visual display but the pimp’s car would have to suffice. With a whine the car took roughly to the air. We climbed out above the jumbled superstructure of the Rigs. The sparse and intermittent lights and trash fires winked at us through ancient, corroded and tangled metal.

‘Morag,’ I said to the prostitute who was cradling one of humanity’s enemies on the back seat. She wriggled free and leaned towards me. ‘I need you to reach into the big pocket on my jeans and remove what you find there.’ She looked at me sceptically. ‘Just do it,’ I ordered her brusquely. She did as I asked and pulled out a smooth black rectangle of expensive tech. ‘Jack me in,’ I told her. She pulled on the jack, reeling out the cord and pushing it into one of the four plugs in the back of my neck. I felt it click into place beneath my skin, once a deeply unpleasant sensation, now commonplace.

‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice showing curiosity despite her underlying fear. The nose of the aircar sank as I powered it forward and headed towards the neon of central Dundee.

‘Most soldiers and all special ops people have transponders implanted in them so they can be tracked on the battlefield.’ I nodded towards the black block she’d just jacked me into. ‘That is an electronic countermeasures block. I’m going to jam my signal.’ I left out that the transponders were also of use for when the amount of plastic and metal outweighed your soul and turned you into a machine deep in the grip of psychosis. I also left out that while on active service most special ops types could switch their transponders on and off. For those times when it was important nobody knew where you were or what you were doing.

Everything went white, bright white. My flash compensators tried with little success to damp down the brightness. My audio filters shut down so I felt rather than heard the explosion. They were still letting in the frequencies that allowed me to hear Morag’s terrified scream and the sound of metal being punctured. The aircar was hurled forward as I desperately tried to control the machine. Through the drugs I was dimly aware of the heat and the signals that would normally be pain coming from my leg. I was also dimly aware of wetness on my trouser leg and wetness of a different consistency coating me. I realised I was tasting alien.

As the bright light subsided I managed to piece together what had happened while brutally bringing the car’s backup system online. Morag was sobbing silently; I think she was too scared to make a noise. Foul-smelling steam surrounded the aircar. Debris floated or fell past us, some of it raining down on the car. I could see the outside through a hole in the floor of the car. There was a matching one in the ceiling and in my badly bleeding leg.

Behind us there was a steaming crater where the Forbidden Pleasure used to be. The crater was rapidly being filled with the polluted river water of the Tay. Even after everything I had seen I was still appalled that Rolleston, or his masters, would use an orbital weapon on an Earth-side city. The alien had also been hit, shot through the car. Much of its liquid flesh coated the inside of the car, though there was still a semi-solid, faintly humanoid mass on the terrified Morag’s lap.

It was Bran, it had to be, somewhere on one of the rigs. Probably perilously close to where she’d called in the orbital strike. She had us in the crosshairs of her smartlinked sniper railgun. She’d killed the alien, tidied up the witnesses and given me a warning shot because there was no way she would have missed unless she chose to. Blood was pissing out of my leg, pooling in the footwell and even leaking out of the hole made by Bran’s railgun.

I managed to keep the Saab in the air as I reached into one of the many pockets of my long coat and removed a stim patch and attached it to my neck. It would keep me awake but I needed to do something about the bleeding; my self-repair systems were good but I was losing way too much blood. I cursed myself for not having brought my first-aid kit. The split screen on my internal visual display showed me what was going on around the aircar. I was controlling the vehicle through my interface; this left my hands free to search for an in-car medical kit. I found one but most of its contents were long gone.

Morag was still sobbing quietly. Her world, regardless of how bad it had been, had just disappeared in a moment of light and heat.

‘Morag?’ I said. She ignored me. I could see her fading into shock. ‘Morag!’ Her head jerked around to face me. ‘Can you fly this?’ I asked her. I already knew the answer but I wanted her mind on something else. She shook her head, her lips tight and bloodless, face pale under her make-up. I cracked a smile on the burnt visage of my ruined face. ‘That’s unfortunate.’ She gaped at me before my completely inappropriate humour made her smile and shake her head. I held the wound on my leg closed and headed for the city.