‘What happened? Where were you, man?’
Dane looked at him as if making a decision.
‘I saw the sky catch fire,’ he finally told Chino.
More crazy Lazy Dane shit, Chino thought.
‘The fucking Brits sold us out,’ Chino said, pained. Dane was shaking his head.
‘No, they were true, righteous. The sun fell to Earth. They walk with me now.’
Chino tried to make sense of this.
‘Shit,’ he finally said. ‘It’s over then.’
Dane shrugged.
‘Nothing’s ever over man, we just change state.’
Chino closed his eyes. It had all been for nothing, the fighting, the pain, all the dead. CELL would win. The world was theirs now. It probably had been for a while.
‘You know what this place is?’
‘A graveyard?’ Chino suggested, giving into his pain and the despair.
‘It’s a necropolis. All of them. Our guys, CELL , the victims of the disease and everyone back to when this was a swamp and it belonged to the first people. They’re all still here. Ceph too, human and alien living together, it’s beautiful man. It’s dead and it’s beautiful.’
Chino said nothing. There wasn’t much he could say to a crazy person’s ramblings.
‘Thank you,’ Dane said.
‘For what, man? You saved me.’
‘For being my goat.’
Chino stared at him. ‘Your what?’
‘When a shikari hunts a tiger he…’
‘Tethers a goat to a tree and bleeds it a little to get the tiger’s attention.’
Dane nodded. Chino stared at him. He doesn’t think he’s one of us anymore. He thinks we’re playthings, mere mortals.
Chino spat in his face.
Maybe if the nanosuit hadn’t been so badly damaged Dane would have heard their comms. If Chino hadn’t been so badly hurt, if both of them had been alert, then maybe they would have heard them moving around beneath them.
They had been pinpointed by thermographics. The fire hadn’t helped.
The floor of the open plan office exploded in a circle around Dane and Chino. They fell through to the floor below them. The impact made Chino scream as multiple wounds were badly jarred and he started to piss blood again. The campfire exploded in a shower of sparks.
Dane was moving. Disappearing, becoming transparent, fading into the background. Then he was wreathed in lighting. Electrostatically charged pellets fired from K-Volt weapons stuck to Lazy Dane’s suit. The pellets dropped the cloak, making him visible. More and more of the pellets stuck to him. The voltage he was receiving grew and grew. The damaged suit’s systems were overloaded. They started shutting down. The pellets were electrocuting Dane as he tried to move. There were four members of the CELL spec ops armed with K-volts. They continued laying on the fire.
Dane looked like he was made of electricity as he stood up. Members of the spec ops team took a step back.
Chino saw his Majestic. He was reaching for his big revolver when someone stood on his hand and then kicked him in the face, hard. He saw lights and felt sick. He felt darkness swimming up to claim him.
‘Reloading,’ the first K-Volt gunner said as he ran out of pellets. There was only a hint of panic in the man’s voice. He swapped out the magazine as the next, and then the next gunner, ran out of pellets as well. Dane took a step forwards.
Reloaded, they started firing again. Dane took another step forwards through the electricity crackling all around him and then toppled over.
‘Don’t stop firing, the Commander ordered.’ They didn’t.
Chino came to again. He glanced over and saw Dane being dragged out. A VTOL was circling the building, using its spotlight to provide light for the spec ops team. Chino wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone so singularly bound with restraints as Lazy Dane.
‘Commander, he’s awake,’ a CELL commando standing over Chino said. The Commander of the Spec Ops team turned to look at her subordinate. She shrugged.
‘He’s surplus to requirement.’
Chino looked up at the gun barrel. He saw the finger tightening around the trigger.
He felt calm.
A Foreign Country
Screaming. Agony. Then nothingness.
Jab, jab, hook, cross, move your fucking feet. Mike reflected that the less he had trained, the more out of shape he’d gotten, the more he hit the drink, the food, certain recreational pharmaceuticals, the more he’d been fighting. I said move your fucking feet, not mince around like a fairy! Mike bobbed left and right, weaving rapidly, and threw another combination of punches at the heavy bag.
When he’d thought of himself as a fighter, in the streets — stupid shit — as a nipper, or in pubs, clubs, he’d been lying to himself. There had been no discipline to it, no real effort, just the excitement but it wasn’t the rush he felt in the ring. There certainly wasn’t the feeling of satisfaction that there was in winning a match.
Speedball next, then pullups and then skipping to warm down. No showers in this gym, just the smell of leather and the stench of more than a hundred years of sweat. Then back to walking the streets looking for work.
It had been another morning with nothing to show for it but sore feet. He glanced at the sandwich board outside the newsagent as he made for the Blind Beggar. It was a headline from a newspaper he liked to think of as the Daily Fail, trumpeting the passing of the controversial Offenders Conscription Act. Mike just shook his head as he pushed the door open to the Beggar and the welcoming smell of his local.
He took another sip of his pint. He found it easy to waste away the afternoon in the pub, but Sarah had said he should only have one during the day, when he was trying to find work. He wanted to savour it. He stared at the sparse list of jobs in the local paper, willing himself to be qualified for one of them. As what? He remembered Sarah telling him you can’t think like that. He thought about how his world had changed. He used to be all about wanting a life like he saw on telly, a rich easy life. Now he’d settle for a job in a warehouse. The news was talking about another dip, a triple dip. Mike was of the opinion that this was just the way things were going to be for the foreseeable future. People needed to get used to it.
‘Hello, Psycho.’ The voice was so gravelly it sounded a cigarette away from full-blown throat cancer. Don’t call me that, but you didn’t tell Jack Hamilton anything. Mike looked up and pretended to be pleased to see Hamilton. In truth he liked the man, and always had done. He had been a good friend to Mike’s dad. Mike had looked up to him, and Jack had done right by his mother after his dad had died over some stupid shit in a pub.
Hamilton was tall and still had a thick, full head of hair for a man in his late sixties, though it was white now. Jack had never been a pretty man. He had a flat face and a nose that had been repeatedly broken in his youth. He did, however, have an undeniable charisma.
‘Well, well, if it isn’t Jack Hamilton, last of the great white gangsters,’ Mike said, smiling.
‘You always were a cheeky cunt, weren’t you?’ Hamilton said, smiling indulgently. ‘How’s your mum?’
Mike shrugged.
‘She’s keeping alright. Needs to get out a bit more.’
‘Real looker in her day, your mum.’
‘Jack…’ Mike started. Hamilton hit him on the shoulder.
‘You know I don’t mean nothing by it.’ Hamilton sat down at the stool next to Mike and lit up a cigarette.
‘Jack, you’re going to get my licence taken away,’ Jean screeched at Hamilton. Some of the pub’s punters were of the opinion that the sharp-tongued undisputed matriarch of the Beggar had been here before the pub, just waiting for it to be built around her. She’d always reminded Mike of the harpies that Zeus had sent to torment Phineus, but in a good way.