And yet... she blinked, realising the truth, meeting her own accusing stare. She still loved him, still loved him with a passion greater than life. But she would rather die than acknowledge that love; for her father was always at the back of her mind, the extended index finger jabbing at her in mockery and a prelude to execution, of mind and spirit, and soul.
Pippa moved to the shower and stood under a stream of hot water, wishing it could wash away her bad dreams, her dark thoughts, her evil past. But it couldn’t. Nothing could do that.
Kotinevitch wore a tight black suit with the rank insignia of General gleaming against one sleeve. She crossed the massive cargo bay, glancing up at distant roof struts a kilometre above her, then around at the ranged display of cargo ships gleaming black and gold in the vast freezing interior. Her breath came in short smoke bursts. Her boots crushed ice crystals on the steel walkway mesh.
Vitch approached the docked ship alone as Loaders and Plutonium Cranes buzzed around her, many automated, but several hundred manned by stocky crewmen. The docked ship looked out of place; no Cargo Hulker, but a slim slip of a vehicle, dull white and grey, sleek and designed for speed, for infiltration. No name adorned the ship’s flanks, but Vitch knew the model well; it was an illegal outlawed one man stealth-fighter; an Interceptor.
She approached the ramp. There was no visible sign of life within.
Touching a hand to her scabbarded yukana sword, a movement of instinct, of reassurance, she placed a boot on the ramp, and looked up into black eyes. He was a small man, slim and wiry, head bald, features rough under heavy black eyebrows. He wore a short pointed beard peppered with grey. His torso was naked, legs enclosed in baggy black trousers, and tight boots shining with a military gleam. His body was powerfully muscled and heavily scarred, arms, chest, belly, neck, some scars evidence of knife or sword fights, some indicative of previous bullet wounds; some were neat, some ragged. All were worn with pride.
Vitch moved slowly up the ramp, her eyes drinking in the man. He was drying his hands on a towel, and stepped aside to allow her entry to the craft.
She stepped wordlessly inside, turned, and with delicate fingers unbuttoned her tunic. In seconds she stepped free of her uniform and stood naked, skin gleaming, eyes bright as the scarred man approached and hit a switch. Doors kissed shut.
“Mr. Max,” breathed Kotinevitch.
He moved to her, his mouth on hers, hand dropping instantly between her legs. She groaned, green lips parting as his fingers entered her and he kissed her strongly, tongue in her mouth, hand moving instantly, frantically slick with her eagerness, her want, her lust. Vitch’s hands tugged down his trousers with an urgency she had forgotten; and he entered her hard, her legs coming up over his hips to accept his harsh thrusts, needy as her head lolled back, hair falling free, and for a few minutes she lost herself to this hard brash primal brutal animal fucking. She climaxed first, he a few seconds later, and they stayed like that, against the Interceptor
’s
console for a few long lingering moments as reality tumbled and drifted back to slot neatly, precisely, into place.
Eventually, chewing her lower lip, she glanced up into black emotionless eyes.
“I needed that,” said Vitch; her voice was music.
“It’s been a long time,” said Mr. Max.
“I have a job for you,” said Vitch.
Mr. Max nodded, and they dressed slowly under the blue light of the ship’s interior. Outside, the Plutonium Cranes buzzed and laboured, hydraulic arms hauling and lifting and depositing; huge freighter caskets were heaved into the sky and dumped on stacker racks with deafening
clangs
and the clatter of steel on steel.
Mr. Max moved to a tiny bench and poured two drinks, handing one to Vitch who smoothed out creases in her uniform and buckled her yukana in place.
“Assassination?”
“Yes.” Vitch sipped her drink. It was smooth and warm. It caressed her throat like silk. “I’ve sent Betezh to mop up his own mess; but the game is bigger than we first thought. We believe the squad carries a Dark Flame with it. Clever, ingenious of our enemies, in fact. This Combat K squad in particular has re-formed despite a government imposed GroupD prohibition order. Betezh was sent to bring back one escapee, not to take out a Combat K squad. However, now our contact loop has been detached I can’t call him for a further sixteen hours. He’s on his own, and way out of his league. One drugged-up prisoner is one thing; a full squad?” She laughed a cruel laugh. “I don’t anticipate his return, not in one body-piece, anyway.”
“So I lock on when I can? Finish the job?”
“Yes.”
Vitch moved close, slid her hand down the front of his trousers. Her fingers curled around him, felt him harden immediately despite recent ejaculation. She smiled in appreciation. She kissed his neck, tasting salt.
“You want me to kill all three?”
“I want you to fuck me again.”
“And then you want me to kill all three?”
“Yes. Keenan is the leader.”
“The others?”
“Pippa, and Franco.”
“I know of Keenan, and I know the squad. I worked with them once, a long time ago; although they will not remember me. I was a... different man.”
“You accept?”
Mr. Max smiled a thin smile. It looked wrong on his face. His dark eyes were unreadable, but glittered with insect amorality. “Consider them dead,” he said.
“There is another problem.”
“Yes?”
“They seek the Fractured Emerald.”
“Big problem,” agreed Mr. Max.
“You can stop this?”
Mr. Max considered the situation. “You are talking of Leviathan?”
“I am.”
Mr. Max tutted. “I will do what I can,” he promised.
Kotinevitch returned to her personal quarters aboard the Class Q Cruiser,
The Sickness and the Cure.
She felt satisfied, deep down inside: satiated to her core.
She kicked off boots and allowed her long elegant toes to revel in thick syrupy carpets, liquid fibre that washed over her feet like gentle surf. She slumped onto her COMBO bed, at ease, and for a few moments was just a normal, everyday flesh and blood woman: no general, no war-commander in charge of a billion heavily armed soldiers, a war fleet and a corrupt maverick view on how a government should discipline its subordinates. For long moments she revelled in this simplicity; she felt young again. Sex usually did that. But, like the best of drugs, the effect was short-lived: a clit-tease, a come-on.
Vitch gave a deep sigh and closed her eyes in the moment of total physical satisfaction. She allowed the COMBO bed to massage her with nano-electric insertions.
Mr. Max, she thought, and shivered; a little in delight, a little in memory of his touch, a little in fear. She had known him for fifteen years, and yet he was still deliciously unpredictable. Twice he had tried to kill her, and twice she had bought him. A mercenary to the core, money was the only currency he worshipped: no honour, no code, no loyalties; and yes, they enjoyed a needful sex, a union of personal necessity, but even this tenuous link of love—lust
—
was something Kotinevitch refused to acknowledge as anything other than feral. A meeting of convenience, but then, that was the way she preferred it. And Mr. Max?
Mr. Max did not love. He was an automaton: a killing machine.
Max by name, max by nature, she thought. When he got drunk, he drank to be sick. When he fucked, he fucked till he bled. And when assigned to murder...
Mr. Max would not stop.
Period.
Chapter 5
Cityslickers
“Freeport 557 ahead,” said Pippa. “Bringing her round.”
The members of Combat K braced themselves as jets howled and the Hornet slowed, slamming down through the atmosphere and into the middle of a storm. Thick grey clouds rolled, engulfed them, swathed them, grey and black and bruised, and lit internally by horizontal
cracks
of lightning. Several bounced off the Hornet’s hull, and Keenan and Franco exchanged glances. It reminded them of a previous mission, years ago, when they’d been struck from the sky. It had resulted in seven dead. Not a pleasant memory.
“OK. Down we go.”
More jets fired along with a vertical turbine; the sound of metal spinning against metal droned distantly. Then they were free of the clouds, storm rain pounding the Hornet, and The City spread before them like an infinite neon nightmare.
“Wow baby,” said Franco.
“Yeah,” said Keenan. “I always forget how crazy it looks, until I come back. What a dump.”
“Ready to touch, boys. Make sure you’re buckled in.”
Franco winked at Keenan. “That’s what she always says to me, when’s she’s in her kinky mood.”
“In your dreams, Little Man.”
“Often,” grinned Franco.
Lights and lasers flooded the sky, lighting the interior of the Hornet with iridescence. Below, The City was, well, a city spreading off unto infinity. It consistently reminded Keenan of a kind of kamikaze version of Hong Kong or Tokyo, only much wider, much taller, with tiers sporting buildings built on gantries above other buildings, giving an impression of architectural anarchy, which it surely was.
“We’ve got clearance,” said Pippa. In fact, no identity or registration had been requested, just a technical report on the ship for safety reasons. The City welcomed everyone. However, it was safe to assume the Freeports of The City were constantly observed by a myriad of spies from a fistful of different factions, some of which may even have been friendly.
The Hornet caressed steelconcrete, suspension dipping and engines sighing. Rain drummed on the hull, running in rivulets down the cockpit. Combat K unbuckled.
“Nice landing,” said Cam, spinning into view.
“Why thank you,” smiled Pippa, climbing from her seat. “Nice to see that at least one of the crew has some manners. Come on Keenan, let’s get this show on the road. We’re on a tight budget. Who knows what shadowy bastards have clocked us.”
Keenan nodded. “Kit’s all packed. Fortune gave me a contact via kube: Rebekka Kobayashi. She’s a gun runner, knows The City, can take us to a variety of dealers depending on what hardware we need. Franco, you finish that shopping list?”
“Just uploaded it to your PAD. Everything we discussed plus some specials that might come in handy: tank killers, some new forms of explosives, that sort of thing.”
“They teach you that in Mount Pleasant?”
“Let’s just say I had a lot of reading time,” said Franco testily.
Keenan and Pippa headed for the ramp, shouldered their packs, and checked their discrete holstered weapons. Keenan carried his Techrim 11mm, and both were carrying Makarov 3mm Microbore pistols and spare magazines. Just in case of “trouble”.Trouble they didn’t expect, but then, muggings and casual murder were seen as collateral damage on the streets of The City.
“Keenan?”
“Yeah, Franco? And I hope it’s not that same damn question.”
“It is.”
“Then the answer’s no.”
“Come on, Keenan, just one pub, one bar, one beer. I’ve been locked up for three years, my man. My throat is dry. My loins are choked. I need a release.”
“Plenty of time in the SIM SUIT on the way to Ket.”
Franco, scowling heartily, said, “You have no soul, brother.”
“On the contrary, I have too much. That’s why you’re staying put. I don’t want you dead.”
“Cam?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Make sure the Ginger One doesn’t leave. If he does, sting him.”
Cam, spinning slowly with a blue light blinking, seemed to turn to face Franco. Franco’s mouth had opened. Then it closed again and he frowned.
It’s grinning,
he thought.
The little bastard is grinning!
He watched Keenan and Pippa clump down the ramp, out into the leaden rain, which soaked them instantly.
Pippa turned and smiled. “See you later, deviant.”
Franco cursed.
Then, with a tiny
whirr
of motors, the ramp sealed and trapped him inside the Hornet’s belly.
Keenan and Pippa jogged across steelconcrete until they were under a shelter. A thousand people jostled on the walkways and ramps, the escalators and personal two-man flyers, the skeetboards and air-cycles. With his back against a neon plastic wall Keenan checked his PAD while Pippa, nervous now, watched their surroundings.
Rain pounded. Thunder rumbled ominously. Salescreens barked and laughed, chattered and crackled. The people were a throng, jostling and jarring, and inter-mixed were what Keenan—old fashioned to the point of pedantry—still called aliens
.
Proxers, human in form except they had bright, bright eyes displaying silicon origins walked freely, practically without differentiation. Scattered in the mix were GGs and even more modern, much rarer and far more lethal,GKs: advanced AI systems, some humanoid in appearance, but several taking the forms of chassis blocks or spheres. There were also kajunga, who always appeared—to Keenan anyway—as small fat children, only with orange skin and a nasty vicious temperament that could never be matched by any human. Slabs lumbered in the throng, huge muscled war machines bred a hundred thousand years ago in VATS for amoral war games on a planetary scale; but now a discrete race in their own right under Time Equality Laws. There were SIMS, biomechanical humans, proxers or kajunga ranging from one of three classes: Servile, Justice, and Battle. It was all part of the upgrade service.