The City was a planet, and the planet was a city: a big one. Over centuries it had grown, a fast-consuming virus, a cancer overwhelming its host, a swarm of nanobots intent on bio-molecular rearrangement... and, ultimately, betterment. The City—the planet in its entirety—was a synthetic mish-mash jungle of stone, concrete, alloy, a cacophony of contrasting architectural styles from every human, alien and basic organiclife-form Quad-Gal side; it rose, dominated, building upon building upon building, tower looming over tower, bridges of steel and glass spanning oceans and deserts and arctic trade zones. The City had once been a planet; and the city had consumed the planet. Every inch of the world had been terraformed; oceans raged beneath alloy struts, onyx bridges, bone walkways, and diamond skyscrapers. Deserts drifted cool in the shadow of elevated fifty-lane freeways, raging sandstorms muffled below buildings, halls, and apartments as big and as singularly hugeas any of the old Earth cities in their entireties. The polar icecaps had been a mere distraction for planetary engineers obsessed with expanding and building, growth and enterprise, dominance and conquest. The City was the epicentre of wealth in the Quad-Gal. Nowhere could come close to the economic and private military might of the City. With a population of 112 trillion there was nothing that could not be bought, sold or exchanged, a situation perpetuated and accentuated by the fact there were no regulations. The City had no written rules, laws, or taxation on immigration, trade, import or export. The City welcomed smugglers, robbers and illegal traders: they were rich. The whole ethos of the City was that of free will, free trade, free speech. It wasn’t exactly anarchy, but to the casual eye—and especially to one who had never before visited—it was a damn close approximation, either of Anarchy... or Hell... depending on one’s individual standpoint and ethos.
Keenan hated the City, because for a man steeped in a need for spiritual balance, self-imposed internal recrimination, and a search for the meaning to his own existence, the City was, as Keenan succinctly put it, a shit-hole—populated by human insects.
Franco, on the other hand, loved it. He loved the wildness, the unpredictability, the bustle and sheer exhilarationof every single damned minute on this planet of excess and debauchery. There was nothing that couldn’t be bought. There were no laws, and, therefore, no police. One couldn’t get into trouble on the City, because there were no defining boundaries of what trouble actually constituted. Murder, rape, mutilation, robbery, depraved acts of sexual congress, genocide: all were technically acceptable acts on which the City had based its mammoth wealth and continually expanding growth. It was a haven for criminals wanted in other parts of the Quad-Gal. It was also the major trading post, stop-off holiday spot and refuelling depot for any space-going craft wishing to travel across Praxda Zeta; as the saying went, “You haven’t lived until you’ve walked City Streets.” There wasn’t a pop star, movie star or politician who didn’t have some manner of luxury pad there. It was the place
to be
, to
hang
, to
chill.
“You know it makes sense,” beamed Franco, reclining in the Swallow Couch on the other side of the Chill Bay. “Come on, Pippa, back me up on this one.”
Pippa frowned, glancing up from her laptop. Her face glowed with reflected light from the screen. “I’ve got to admit it, Keenan, and loath though I am to say it, Franco’s right. Ket has a bad reputation, and I mean properly evil;it’s permanently at war and we need some heavy weapons on entry. We ain’t going to pick that sort of military hardware up without licenses, not unless we visit the City.”
Keenan gritted his teeth, and ran hands through his short, spiked hair. He shook his head in the negative, yet knew inside he’d already lost the battle even as it began. He had to admit it, should have voiced obvious concerns: but, “it’s a dangerous den of depravity down there,” would be to miss the point entirely. They were a Combat K squad. Danger was their middle name... and they needed weapons.
You’re going soft, Keenan told himself.
He ground his teeth together.
Shit.
Franco rolled from his embracing jelly couch and stomped across the Chill Bay. He patted Keenan on the shoulder. “Come on, Kee. It’ll be just like the old times. We’ll have a scream! It’s party time, mate. It’s always party time Cityside.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Don’t be such a spoilsport! You’re turning into a boring old bastard, and I ain’t just talking about the grey at your temples. All that time on Galhari has transformed you into a dullard! The sun has gone to your head, the wine to your belly and the philosophy bleached from your soul
.
You’re losing your balls, my friend, and your spunk has shot out the window.”
Keenan considered this rant, then frowned. “Franco, do I have to remind you that you’re a wanted man down there, wanted dead, and not just by one, but by four of the Seven Syndicates. Now, call me old-fashioned, but won’t you be pushing your luck just a bit too much by popping up again like a rabbit from a burrow? Hey guys, here I am, remember me, I almost robbed a hundred billionin diamonds, but let’s just put that misunderstanding behind us for old times’ sake. Let’s just be friends.”
“Hey,” grinned Franco, shrugging, “they don’t call me Lucky Franco for nothing.”
“Mate, they don’t call you Lucky Franco at all. You got shot last time we came here.”
“’Twas merely a misunderstanding.”
“Six times?”
“I was popular with the ladies.”
Keenan stared at Franco, stared long and hard.
Were you always like this?
he thought to himself.
Back in the old Combat K days? Or is it just the drugs from Mount Pleasant that have scrambled your brain?
Then he realised the truth with that sinking feeling of betting on red and coming up black; Franco had always been like... well, Franco: a little mad, a little bad, a man living on the edge of a razor; a lunatic waiting for sanity to kick in like a teen waits for maturity and that first desperate warm slick fumble.
“Are we going in?”
Keenan stared at Pippa’s raised eyebrows. He gave a single nod. “Franco stays on the ship,” he said. “Me and you will conclude the deal. Franco is grounded.”
“Aww, Keenan!”
“Don’t fucking ‘aww Keenan’ me, Franco. When you’re in this sort of mood you’re a liability. So get back in your Swallow Couch, eat your crisps, drink your Coke, watch your vids, and shut the fuck up. I’m not ruining the mission before it starts just because you can’t keep your cock in your knickers.”
“Yeah, boss. And Keenan?”
“Francis?”
“Glad to see you’ve still got some fire.”
Keenan bared his teeth in a grin promising violence and pulled free his Techrim 11mm, which he slammed on the console with a
clack
. “You’d better believe it, you old goat.”
Pippa set the Hornet’s Sinax Tapes for The City, a few hundred million klicks towards the centre of the Praxda Zeta galaxy cluster. However, even backpacking on an inter-galaxy half-umbilical, in a Hornet it would take the squad seventeendays. Seventeen long days... out in VoidSpace, living in one another’s laps.
A K Jump would have been easier, preferable, even. But K Jumps were dangerous and massively illegal, and getting increasingly dangerous all the time. It seemed there was a basic computational flaw in 99.9 percent of all computer chips, which meant sometimes—manytimes
—
they got it wrong. And if you got a K Jump wrong, you ended up somewhere else entirely, somewhere not quite right. That, or spread like marmalade across the galaxy.
After Combat K’s accelerated exit from
Hardcore
and a few moments of exhilaration as the group waited to see if Cam really coulddisarm the logic-cubes implanted in Pippa’s skull (the lady herself had looked merely bored as Cam juggled with a billion separate unlocking codes), all three settled down for a large meal, a few bottles of wine and a discussion on their next tactical move. Keenan wanted to set a course straight for Ket; but as Pippa pointed out, it was probably one of the most dangerous war zones in the Sinax Cluster. They needed the right equipment for an infiltration. This had led to Franco—eyes gleaming, lips wet and red—suggesting a visit to The City to tool up
.
The fact he’d been locked in a sanatorium for three years probably had something to do with it. And yet, despite his reservations, Keenan had to reluctantly agree there was nowhere else within a four year radius where they could so easily put their hands on military grade kit.
“I need some sleep,” yawned Pippa eventually.
Franco glanced over. “Need some company?”
“In your dreams, Franco.”
“Precisely.”
Pippa stared at the intense look on his face; an intensity arrived at due to his right hand as sexual partner for over a thousand days. She studied him for the first time in years.
Franco was small, five feet and zero inches of vertically challenged height. He was rotund, barrel-chested, shoulders and arms stocky and empowered with an obvious and inherent strength; he was supported by legs that could only be described in a generous world as stumpy. His face was long, hardy, swarthy, but could never be described as handsome. It had strength, yes, character, certainly, but beauty? Only the rugged beauty of a fine vegetable. Atop his head grew wiry thick, bushy ginger hair, which Franco sported in a variety of styles. Usually, on ops he had it shaved close to the scalp, fine. However, on certain occasions—this being one of them—he allowed it to grow and expand and bush-out into what resembled an unkempt hedge. Sometimes, by cruel members of Combat K, this hairy outpouring had become known as “TheMonstrosity”, named after that millennium-old song by robot rockers The Queen. And so, to finish the visual debauchery, Franco intermittently grew a beard. On occasion, a neatly trimmed goatee affair; more often, a vast and hazardous bush clamped limpet-like to his face and used as a store for crumbs.
Pippa loved Franco to bits; she enjoyed many aspects of his wild and wacky character, and owed her life to him on numerous counts. But take him as a lover? Even for a quick shag?
Franco was staring intently.
Pippa smiled. “I’d rather stab myself in the eye.”
Franco shrugged. “You don’t know what you’re missing, babe. One brothel voted me Most Energetic Punter of the Year. I am, trust me, a considerate and robust lover.”
“Franco.” Pippa sighed. “We’ve been working combat missions together, on and off, for what? Ten years?”
“Something like that.”
“And in those ten years, you have accosted me for sex, what? I dunno, give me a rough idea?”
Franco shrugged. He considered this. “Probably about five, six... maybe seven hundred times?”
“Have I ever acquiesced?”
“Never.”
“So why now
?
What’s changed? You know my history. If anything, my outlook on the male of the species has degraded. I am not what you might determine prime-time totty. And, despite what your insane over-inflated ego might think, I am not in the remotest bit physically attracted to you. Do you hear me?”
Franco grinned. “Worth a try.” He yawned and winked at Keenan. “Think I might turn in. You sure you won’t reconsider...” His words lingered like a bad smell.
“No!” snapped Pippa.
Franco rose, stretched, and ambled down the corridor towards his SleepCell.
Silence surrounded Keenan and Pippa. Pippa returned her concentration to the laptop, and Keenan moved to a portal and gazed out at the inky blackness beyond. Burners were growling distantly, accelerating the Hornet ready for what was termed, slang-wise as a HalfBack Sinax Ride, or “Half Sin”; one of the faster ways to cross the galaxy.
“Look at it out there.”
“Mm?” Pippa glanced up.
“VoidSpace... an eternity of darkness. It’s a long way down.”
Pippa stood and crossed to Keenan. She looked up into his face, and their eyes met. He wanted her then, urgently, badly, a burning throughout his entire body, his entire core, every atom screaming for her with infinite need in every growling lusting molecule. Pippa was beautiful; from her upturned chin, her thick dark hair, her cool grey eyes, down to the small mole on her left ankle. In fact, as Keenan studied her, he realised she was more than beautiful. She carried a natural elegance, and mixed it with a hint of insanity, and a pheromone outpouring of danger. A natural-born killer. The female of the species, more deadly than the male? Damn. Fucking. Right.
“No,” said Pippa.
“What?”
“I can see it in your eyes, Keenan. Those days are gone, they’re over. We were together, once. Yeah, and I loved you. But that was a long time ago. Things have changed.”
“I still love you.”
Pippa nodded. “And your wife?”
“It was complex. I was lonely. We’d grown apart and she... she had betrayed me. We were married in nothing but name; yeah I still loved her, but you know it’s possible to love more than one person. Pippa, you knowwhat happened between me and Freya; the things that forced us apart. We don’t need to mine that shitshaft again.”
“Yeah, but still.”
Keenan took hold of Pippa’s shoulders. Their eyes locked. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“But? Still? You cast me aside, Kee. You chose to leave, to betray my love, and my heart. You broke me, Keenan, for a long, long time; so long. When we met, it was hard for me... to love... especially after my father, hard for me to find trust in a man, to find understanding. I found it in you. Then you broke me, made me worse than I ever was. When those men raped my sister, I hunted them down. It took them days to die. I’d sit with them, staked out, inject their veins with drugs, peel the skin from their bodies. I cut chunks from their flesh and fried it in oil, fed it to them, watched them self-ingest. I amputated limbs with a hack-saw. I bled them, cut out eyes, tongues, castrated them with a blunt knife. And every moment, every precious sip of that terrible nectar that poured uncontrollably through my veins... well, I was thinking of you, Keenan, thinking about what I would do to you when I met you again.”