“I apologise.” Jukan composed ruffled feathers. “This land is too warm for my liking. And your arrogance and lack of manners to a superior Quad-Gal officer are far from appreciated in one so...” he savoured the word, “renowned.”
Kotinevitch reached forward, lifted a tiny brass bell and gave it a ring. The high-pitched chime sang across the chamber. A small woman entered dressed in a simple black robe and leading a Helk on a short TitaniumIII leash.
The huge beast lumbered uncertainly, hooves clacking on the marble, its triple nostrils snorting under snot-matted grey fur. Small bovine eyes moved in a large cubic skull, surveying the men suspiciously as the woman came to a halt. The Helk shambled to an almost mechanical standstill behind her.
“Ahh,” Vitch smiled, “our omen has arrived.” She stood, and in one fluid motion the yukana was unsheathed and slammed through the Helk’s bulky neck in a shower of sparkling, suspended crimson. Vitch lowered her blade, where blood rolled free of the frictionless surface.
There came a
slap
as the huge shaggy head hit the ground, then the beast’s front legs folded, and the creature rolled forward and pitched onto its flank. Vitch glanced sideways, to where the five men were bathed in splatters of gore, their neat uniforms stained, eyes wide in shock. Jukan’s hand had gone to his gun, a Penta 8mm nail pistol; one of his companions restrained him.
Vitch shrugged free her robes so that she stood naked and coiled, then moved towards the twitching farm animal. She dropped to one knee and with a single strike opened the creature lengthways down its belly. Dropping to her other knee in the pulsing surge of blood, she placed her sword delicately to one side and reached inside the creature with both hands. She felt around as great swathes of intestine uncoiled, covering her knees and slopping arterial gore over her crotch and belly, until she pulled out a small purple organ trailing muscles and tendons, which popped free one by one. She lifted the fluttering organ to her face.
Vitch stood, skin stained, eyes meeting Jukan’s.
“What...” he croaked, “what is that?”
“This is the Helk’s usma, similar in function to a human liver. A pure Helk eats grass and baffa, but some cattle become addicted to the Geddo flower, which poisons the usma, and in turn poisons the rest of the meat, creating a food that is highly toxic to humans. If you note, the usma should be pure black. But this? Gentlemen, this is corrupt.” She paused. Her smile was sickly sweet, like the stench of putrefaction. “The Krell consider this a very bad omen.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. Eyes gleamed. “It reminds us of the Days of Leviathan.”
Jukan pulled his pistol, halting the weapon inches from Kotinevitch’s face. “In the army,” he growled, “they call you Vitch the Bitch. Now I see why. This is the way it’s going to work. You move in front of us, very, very slowly, with my pistol in your back. You will lead us to our Hornet. If you so much as piss yourself, I’ll blow a hole in you so wide I can climb through it. Do we understand one another?”
Vitch tossed the Helk’s diseased usma into the air and dropped and rolled, spinning and coming up with her yukana; from kneeling through to standing, the matt blade sliced Jukan from left hip to right clavicle, exiting on a streamer of shoulder shards and blood mist. His body slid into two discrete pieces, and there came a vision of organic cross-section—spine, meat, yellow fat and peeled flesh—as it slid in opposite directions and left four sub-commanders staring in shocked awe.
“We understand one another completely,” Vitch said, glancing towards the remaining men.
One took a step back, both hands coming up in supplication. “Wait...” he said.
Vitch leapt, and in three strikes turned the four figures into butchered meat. She smiled as limbs twitched around her and the stench of blood aroused her.
Through wide eyes set in a gore-splattered face, she licked at her green, salted lips.
She savoured the taste she found there.
“It appears,” she said, “Combat K must die.”
Keenan forced sticky eyes open and stared at the spinning room. Shit
,
he mused. When the room gyrated just as badly as it had the previous night, a man could be sure he’d drunk too much. But then... he had a reason to drink, right? Surely he was allowed that single concession? Every morning the bitter pill of the murders filled his mouth with a taste worse than any second-hand Jataxa.
Keenan rolled from his bed and moved through the kitchen to the veranda doors, flinging them open and stepping out into early morning Karaya sunshine. Distantly, the sea rolled and crashed against an unspoilt white shingle beach. Karaya was climbing the sky, gold and bright, and her sister Tekana toiled a little way to the right, smaller and fiercer, more red than gold. On the rare occasion when Tekana lit the day alone, the world had a blood ambience—to Keenan’s eyes—that always reminded him of war
.
He groaned. One sun would have been bad enough, but two? Did Nature have no sympathy for a man with a hangover? Keenan took several deep breaths of sea air, hands on hips, unshaved face lifted with eyes closed tight. Something bumped his leg, and he glanced down at Cam, his Security PopBot. Small and round and black, the size of a tennis ball and with no discernible features on its shell except for a few scratches and dents, the PopBot seemed—nevertheless—to be grinning.
“What do you want?”
“You’ve got a visitor, down at the office. Been waiting for half an hour.”
“Kube reception. Tell him to come back tomorrow when I feel more... alive
.”
“Tsch,” said Cam, continuing to float near his knee. It lifted then, smoothly, until it was at face level. “A man in your position can’t afford to turn away business, my friend.”
“My position?”
“Bankrupt, gambling debts, heavy drinker. As good with his family accounts as I am at holding a golfing umbrella.”
“Amusing, but don’t push your luck, Cam. Remember, I can have you dismantled, burned, boiled, magnetised. You get the picture?”
“Keenan, I think you’ll want to hear what this man has to say. Call it machine intuition. Trust me.”
“OK. Tell reception I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” He moved inside, to the marble worktop, and lifted his heavy Techrim 11mm pistol, freshly-oiled and with a full 52 round micro-clip.
“But it better be worth it,” he muttered. “I ain’t in the mood for playing games.”
Shaved, showered, fresh pair of shorts and open, flapping blue and white striped shirt, Keenan strode across the crunching shingle to the edge of the sea, and the TitaniumIII mooring. His black metallic Yamaha SeaWarrior jet ski, 380bhp, three cylinder, two stroke and 1800cc of pure muscle with a 10 blade impeller and Titanium glass-alloy panels, bobbed at its mooring against the warp-planked jetty. Keenan waded in knee-deep, unlocked the Yamaha, climbed onto its rolling platform and fired the engine.
The jet ski raced at a fast idle. Keenan settled himself down, fixed his emergency cut-out in place and blipped the throttle. The engine raced on a surge of torque, and Keenan turned the jet ski sharply and headed for deeper water; then down the coast bounding from wave to wave towards the city of Dekkan Tell.
Spray cooled his face. It felt good. And for a little while Keenan could blank out the past.
Despite its nomenclature as third largest cityon the planet of Galhari—which itself lurked on the quiet and peaceful fringes of Quad-Gal, and the Sinax Cluster as a whole—Dekkan Tell was in fact a low slung scatter of white stone buildings sporting terracotta tiled roofs, orange doors and window shutters, all connected by wide paved highways and a proliferation of greenery and bright orange scatters of the local Dekka flowers, which gave the area its name. It was illegal to build over two storeys high in Dekkan Tell, and so the city had spread outwards rather than upwards
.
The modest city had a population of only thirty thousand.
Keenan’s office was a stone’s throw from the sea and connected by a planked walkway from a mooring jetty. Tying his Yamaha, Keenan peered for a moment down the coastline and the low scythe of white buildings that swept as far as the eye could see. Then his sandals flapped towards his office and the engraved bronze plaque on the orange painted woodwork:
Z. KEENAN
PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS UNDERTAKEN
—enquire within
He pushed open the door to see an immaculately dressed man of medium build seated on the cream leather reception sofa. The man had jet black hair, heavily creamed and slicked back into a tight bun, a black drooping moustache, and held a small black hat in both hands; hands adorned with a glittering but tawdry wealth of rings. His head turned as Keenan entered, blue eyes fixing the old soldier with a bright intelligent gaze.
“Anne?” Keenan said, glancing towards his receptionist.
“Mr. Keenan, this is Prince Akeez of Jervai Province. He has not made an appointment but was quite insistent on meeting you. He said he didn’t mind waiting, however long it took.”
Akeez stood, smiling, and the two men shook hands. “Jervai Province?” said Keenan, tilting his head. “Isn’t that the old...”
“Earth colony. Yes, Mr. Keenan. You are indeed correct. Shall we enter your office?”
“After you,” directed Keenan, and followed the man, who walked with a nimble, almost dainty step. After settling into respective seats on either side of Keenan’s warped desk—fashioned from planks of reclaimed sea-timber—Anne brought them both a small saucer of local green Dek coffee, which steamed before them. Keenan leant on his elbows and stared hard at Prince Akeez.
The Prince sipped his coffee; replaced it on the uneven, buckled surface. “A fine distillation.”
“You have a job for me?”
“Ahh yes, straight to the point. Your old friend said it would be this way. He advised you were a man of action, no? He said you are a man to walk the mountains with! A man who always gets the job done!” Here the Prince’s eyes glittered, and his face lost a little of its plumpness; looked almost... feral. “No matter what that job might be,” he added, his voice a low growl.
“And my old ‘friend’... would be?”
“Sergeant Ranger.”
“You can, of course, confirm this?”
“He said you would be suspicious when I approached.” Prince Akeez smiled a knowing smile. “He said you might think I was... the police.” The last word was bad; spoken with sour distaste. “He gave me your old password, so you could find some initial trust at this early juncture, and we would not, at least, have to waste precious time exchanging verbal riposte and parry.”
“The password?”
“Lakanek. However, I confess I do not comprehend.”
“Lakanek was a prison; a long time ago, on another world. It’s—kind of—an old joke.” Keenan’s voice was distant, eyes dark, face hooded. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Be my guest.”
Keenan pulled free a silver case, unhitched the tiny lock and opened the device. He rolled himself a thin cigarette with evil looking Widow Maker tobacco, lit the weed, and breathed deep the unfiltered drug.
“Some would recommend smoking is bad for you.”
“Life is bad for me,” coughed Keenan, and sat back in his chair, home-rolled between his lips, hands behind his head, brooding, half-lidded eyes watching Prince Akeez with precision. Suddenly, Keenan was glad of the 11mm Techrim digging into the base of his spine. And he was glad of Cam’s proximity, although he was damned if he knew exactly where the Security PopBot would be: on the roof, behind the door, in the bin? That was all part of their working relationship.
Instinct told Keenan the man before him was bad news. No,
bad news.
Ignore the effete ways, the gaudy dress, the slicked hair and moustache. Ignore the modest build and almost ladylike mannerisms. Prince Akeez was a warrior; he was dangerous; and he was definitely not to be trusted.
“Tell me about the job.”
“You have heard of the planet Ket?”
“I’ve heard it mentioned news-side. After the Helix War Peace Initiatives there were a cluster of planets that refused to surrender arms. Ket was one of them, a God-awful place where, I believe, war is a constant, not a means to an end. Apparently, violence and death are a way of life.”
“Ket refused to relinquish arms under the Quad-Gal Peace Unification Process. Now, I will be honest, Mr. Keenan, the place is war torn, a veritable hell, in fact. The entire planet is a seething pit of violence, but it contains an incredible prize for those daring enough to see beyond the battered shell.”
“What do you want me to steal?”
“The Ket-i’s most valuable treasure: the Fractured Emerald.”
“Never heard of it.”
Prince Akeez shrugged. “Why should you? If your planet contained the most fabulous, incredible, talented wealth of the universe, would you publicise its presence so that every bounty-hunter and treasure-seeker in Praxda Zeta made a beeline?”
“Sounds dangerous,” said Keenan warily, “and illegal, and likely to get me killed. IfI agreed to do this, and ifI thought success probable, my fee would be high. Depending on my mood, you might never be able to pay enough.”
“Oh, you will agree to this venture, Mr. Keenan.”