Keenan laughed. “You never obeyed my every last whim.”
“It felt like it.”
“How’s it going, children?” Franco grinned from the door, a huge sandwich in one paw, mustard—or at least, something thick and yellow—smeared around his mouth and crusted in his beard. He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and made appreciative mumbling noises.
“Not so bad, mutilator.”
Franco nodded. “Mutilator, heh? Quite good. Quite good. I love this witty repartee, this funky exchange of comedy insults. It’s what makes us a team, right?” He cackled and mooched over to Keenan. “Big place, ain’t it?”
Keenan looked up. “So you’ve done your research?”
“Aye,” nodded Franco. “After all, they don’t call me Mr. Photographic Memory for nothing.”
“Franco... they don’t...” Keenan shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Franco took another bite of his huge sandwich. He dribbled mustard on the map. “Sorry. Sorr
eeee!”
“Franco,” snapped Pippa, “what the helldo you want?”
“Just wondered when we were going to question Betezh. The bastard has been a pain in my throbbing arse for these last few years. Thought it might be time we got some answers.”
“Is it that important?”
“Well, he did say he used to be in a Combat K squad.”
“WHAT?” It was a joint exclamation by both Keenan and Pippa.
Franco shrugged. “That’s what he said.”
“I thought he was a ‘doctor’ from your happy little insanity station?” Keenan was frowning, hard.
“He was.” Franco grinned amiably. “I get the feeling he was planted there, to keep an eye on me, or something.”
Keenan rolled his eyes. “Right. Get your shit together. We’ll meet in the Med Bay in five.”
“Rodgah that!” saluted Franco.
“And Franco?”
“Sah?”
“Stop fucking about, there’s a good lad.”
They formed a semicircle around Dr. Betezh. The lights had been dimmed. The operating table, which had become Betezh’s temporary prison, was lifted to the near-vertical; Betezh did not look a happy man. He stared at them suspiciously.
“OK,” said Keenan, “talk.”
“About?”
“Combat K.”
“What would you like to know?” Betezh gave a nasty smile: the smile of a man who knew a lot, but did not intend divulging. He gestured to Franco. “What has that insane dickhead been spieling you?”
“Less of the insane,” growled Franco.
Keenan narrowed his eyes. “I’ll start at the beginning. Franco says you know about Combat K. You know about us
.
That figures, even if you were onlya doctor at Mount Pleasant. Now, what I want you to consider is this. If you know more about me, then you know about some of the things I’ve done, the places I’ve been, the missions I’ve carried out.” Betezh’s face paled a little. “If so, you’ll know I worked with this squad, but before... yeah, before there was a lot of stuff I’m not proud of. I was not a good boy.”
Keenan pulled his chair a little closer, became more of a conspirator: intimate. Outside, the chill of idle space flowed by, and Betezh felt the hours of his life slipping through oiled fingers.
“You need to talk,” said Keenan. His voice was gentle. “There are things I need to know.”
Betezh nodded. “I do know about you: the three of you, Combat K. I know about the Terminus5 reactor incident; I know about your subsequent trial and incarceration.”
“You were Combat K?”
“Originally,” nodded Betezh. “Then I went K-OPS.”
“A spook?”
Betezh nodded again. “I worked military assignments: spy work, infiltration, gathering evidence, watching suspects, the usual shit.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Pippa, standing up, eyes blazing. “You mean he’s—like—internal fucking affairs? Sent to spy on the good old boys of Combat K? Make sure we’re doing our fucking jobs?”
“Every organisation has its internal agencies,” said Betezh, voice dripping poison. “Because every organisation has its naughty players: those who embezzle, defraud, commit crimes of atrocity. My job was simple: root out decay blossoming at the core of Combat K and excise with a precision scalpel.”
“Now I hate him evenmore than traffic wardens,” interjected Franco. Keenan gave him a savage glance.
“Franco mentioned a name: Kotinevitch.”
Betezh nodded. “My controller.”
“The politician?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her beef? Why the hell is she up to her tits in military stuff?”
Betezh shrugged. “She’s a politician, General Activator for the Quad-Gal’s Warfleet.”
“She, also, knows of us?”
“Oh yes,” said Betezh. “She took an active interest. In a past life, she even wanted you exterminated.”
“Why?” snapped Keenan.
“After the Terminus5 catastrophe you almost caused... an incident
.
Let’s just say your incompetence in the field nearly led to a massive Quad-Gal meltdown, never mind a mere reactor meltdown on the planet. You buried yourselves, Combat K. You showed the military you were incompetent; a joke.”
“Not so,” snapped Pippa. “We were set up.”
“That’s right,” said Keenan. “The whole gig was an arse-fuck. They knew we were coming. It was a charade. We were the central characters in a pantomime; we were the scapegoats, my friend.”
“I know nothing of that.” Betezh’s dark eyes gleamed. Sweat glistened on his Frankenstein stitching.
“This has the sour stench of politicians,” said Pippa bitterly.
Keenan nodded. “Yes, the work of people like Kotinevitch. I’d like to meet this judgemental bitch; I’d like to find out exactly where her personal interest in our little outfit stems.”
“You were merely an embarrassment,” said Betezh.
“No, no,” said Keenan. “That problem was sorted. This went further. This went deeper. There’s another game being played here, and I don’t like the smell
.”
“Whatever,” said Betezh, quietly, “I was given orders to bring back Franco after his escape. That led to you
.
Kotinevitch knows of your re-formation; I believe it’s called a GroupD Prohibition? You knew the consequences and still re-formed. How sad. How—ultimately—tragic. Every killer in the Quad-Gal will be after your skulls.”
Pippa nodded. “He’s right.”
Keenan considered. Then he scratched his stubbled chin. He pointed at Betezh. “This conversation isn’t finished. You hear me, little man? Little fucking internal affairs bureaucrat man? You’re a long way from home. And we’ve got the fucking guns.”
They left. Betezh deflated.
The Med Bay rolled into silence.
“You get that?” he whispered. Inside his head, a chip glowed.
“Every word,” said the sibilant binary hiss of General Kotinevitch.
The Hornet cruised, Ket turning majestically below. Sunlight glimmered from a distant horizon, skimming the planet, illuminating the vista. The Hornet banked, then dropped with a howling acceleration. Panels glowed and engines yammered with retro-thrust as Pippa skilfully took the attack vessel through the upper reaches of this idyllic and apparently peaceful world.
The air became thick: hotter, brighter. The Hornet started to vibrate, a resonation that hummed beyond hearing; Keenan glanced at Franco, who was gritting his teeth, hands clasped tight on the arms of his chair. Franco hated flying, especially planet entry without a SPIRAL dock.
“You OK, mate?”
“Yep.” It was a clipped word; an ejaculation of fear.
“Relax,” soothed Keenan. “Everything’s cool, brother. It’s not as if we’re going to—”
They heard a distant
SLAM.
The Hornet shuddered. Franco stared hard at Keenan.
“What was that? What the hell was it? I thought you said we—”
The Hornet shuddered again, and they all felt it. The machine dropped violently, accelerating, engines howling in metal agony. Keenan could see Pippa fighting the controls.
“What’s going on?” screamed Franco.
This time, the impact picked them up and sent them cart-wheeling through the atmosphere. Inside, Cam bounced from the cockpit windshield. Pippa, in her harness, was the only one to retain her seat as her face, tortured by G-force, fought with the unresponsive controls.
Keenan crawled across the wall—now the floor—and dragged himself to Pippa by brute strength. “What’s—going—on,” he forced through gritted teeth. Then, sirens screamed through the Hornet’s interior. The fighter started to spin, flashing down through sunlight as the world swung and opened up below them, a panorama of lush wilderness and white water. Pippa was stabbing at controls.
“We’re going to crash,” she said quietly.
“What hit us?”
“I—”
More sirens screamed. There were a thousand
clicks
as crash-injectors flipped down from recesses. Keenan caught a glimpse outside; one of the Hornet’s engines detached, flaming, and was snapped away; gone.
“Hold on!” shouted Pippa, and her voice was lost as the several thousand crash-injectors hissed and squirted, filling the Hornet’s interior with Crash Foam.
Keenan turned, was hit by the foam, locked in place as it surrounded him and expanded in an instant; it filled his open mouth and nostrils and plugged his ears, and the world was hammered and descended into a cool green suspension as he was—effectively—divorced from reality. The Hornet’s emergency systems took control. Keenan breathed the weird rubbery substance; infused with oxygen and a sub-prapethylene agent, it would sustain him in stasis for around thirty minutes... enough time to crash... and providing the Hornet didn’t disintegrate in its entirety in the outside world, or, worse, explode.
The ship rocked, a quick succession of blows that hammered Keenan despite the life-saving Crash Foam. He felt himself spinning, stop-motion rolling, turning like a fish in oil, and a distant noise like a subconscious roar of sea surf filled him and engulfed him. More and more blows devastated his being, and he was pounded into a state of tumbling unconsciousness... as an eerie muffled roar filled his drowning senses. He dived, falling and sinking and drowning under a great green ocean.
The world felt wrong. Keenan choked, and it was as if he’d smoked a thousand cigars. He coughed, coughed and coughed and coughed, tears streaming down his face as his lungs disgorged Crash Foam, and he realised he was curled in a ball, retching, head pounding, pain needling his overstretchedeyes. The world was a focus, a concentration of agony, a need to eject that which filled his mouth and throat and lungs.
He scooped thick acid goo from his mouth, plucked it from his nose.
Again, coughing fits wracked his body until he could... breathe.
Keenan sucked in precious air, and for a long time that was all that mattered. Bright red patterns dissolved from his brain and he opened his eyes. Damp sand met his confused stare and he lay for a while, watching the fine white that spread away from him, a perfectly horizontal platter laced with webs of splintered blue and pink shells.
He realised he was on a beach.
We crashed. Shit
.
The heat hit him like a brick. It was terrible: hot and humid, unbearably so. So hot it was a fist in his throat, confusion in his skull, filling his lungs with liquid fire and making it almost impossible to focus.
He moved his head, and his neck and shoulder muscles howled in protest. With a groan, he slowly sat up and the world swayed. Keenan closed his eyes, put his head between his knees and concentrated on not throwing up. Losing the battle, he vomited, and heaved and heaved until his body groaned at him, muscles spasming. He crawled to the edge of the lapping sea and stared down at—
White. The sea was white.
Ket. I’m on
Ket
, he thought.
He cupped his hands, washed his face and cleaned out his mouth with milky brine. Then he scrambled to his knees, and the world smashed into arrangement. The Milk Sea stretched away, vast and calm. Waves rolled, breaking a half-klick out on an arc of blue coral, which half-reared like a bony arm from milky depths. Keenan turned right. The beach stretched away, a shimmering plane crusted with crushed shells, flat and packed where it met the sea. A few feet back a wall of solid, twenty-foot high jungle blocked his exploratory view. Thick hardwoods, creepers and ferns all fought for supremacy; the jungle was a solid mass, a wall, a fortress. Keenan licked sour lips. It frightened him for a moment. It was a real, dangerous, brutal intimidation.
The Milk Sea lapped. Something screeched in the jungle. Keenan’s gaze turned slowly to his left, traced his own squirming marks in the sand, then came to rest on a figure. It was clinging to a rock as if seeking integration. It looked dead
.
“
Pippa!”
Keenan crawled, scrambling to his knees, then his feet. Weak, he struggled across the sand, sweat bathing his body as he tugged free some of his foam-splattered clothing in a feeble fight against the awesome, beating temperature. He reached her. She had been conscious at some point and had tugged free her heavier clothes. One boot trailed laces in the sea. She was draped spastically across what turned out to be a huge violet shell, rimed with a sand salt concoction. Keenan pulled feebly at her.