The coat was a little blackened but would be fine. My jeans were mostly destroyed and my skin was burnt down to the dermal armour on the bottom part of my legs. My left hand and much of my face had been burnt. My hair was a burnt brittle mess coming away in clumps. This burnt visage was what MacFarlane saw as I made my way towards him, slowly reloading my guns. The remaining patrons and hookers in the bar just lay low as I passed. Some of them whimpered, but most were used to scenes like this.
I stood over MacFarlane, still smoking gently. One of the girls had managed to escape but the other one MacFarlane was using as a shield, the pretty gun in his other hand. The pimp was lying between the table and the couch he had been sat on. Not for the first time I wondered how people like this managed to control all the psychopaths they had working for them. I pulled a chair out and sat down, lighting a cigarette, the flickering flames illuminating my ruined face. MacFarlane was desperately trying to think of a way out.
‘That’s illegal ware. You’re boosted way to high. They’ll kill you for that, you know, take you down. CSWAT will be on their way.’
‘I’m working. Let her go,’ I said, meaning the terrified sixteen-year-old girl. MacFarlane seized on this. He put the little gun to her head.
‘Yeah, yeah. Walk out of here or I’ll kill her.’
‘Chivalry is alive and well in Dundee,’ I said sarcastically. MacFarlane did not seem to understand. I sighed and fixed him with a stare. I’d been told that black lenses had the effect of making their owners look like soulless monsters. An effect probably further heightened by my burnt appearance. I pointed the Mastodon at the pair on the floor. ‘Come to terms with your death because you have sent a lot better men before you,’ I said to him. ‘I don’t care about some stranger’s death. It just seems to be a waste to me, so decide if she’s going with you.’ The girl started crying, racking sobs shaking her body. MacFarlane considered my words. He let her go and she scrambled away. It was probably the single best act he had ever done in his life.
‘Where is it?’ I asked MacFarlane.
‘In the stateroom,’ MacFarlane said, overcome with hopelessness.
‘The what?’ I asked.
‘The captain’s cabin. Two decks down, you can’t miss it. It’s the nicest cabin, the fucking captain’s cabin.’ I got up and then stopped.
‘What did you want it for?’ I asked, still assuming that there was some kind of suicidal Them fifth-column cult on Earth. MacFarlane seemed confused at the question.
‘Well, I was going to pimp it,’ he said, as if that was obvious. I let this sink in and started to laugh. MacFarlane looked pissed off that I was laughing at his grand business plan.
‘I could have charged a fortune to let people come here and fuck one of those things, just like they fucked us,’ he said defiantly.
‘You idiot,’ I managed between the laughter. ‘It’s a biological machine designed for killing.’
‘We could have cut holes in it,’ MacFarlane said defensively. This only made me laugh harder. Small men, small ideas, I thought.
‘You mean you are confronted with something from another planet, a completely alien species, and all you can think to do with it is fuck it?’ I asked. MacFarlane obviously did not like being laughed at and was becoming angry despite the danger.
‘What’s so funny? People will pay to fuck anything…’ The report of the Mastodon was very loud in the bridge. MacFarlane slumped to the ground. I exhaled smoke, all trace of amusement gone. I looked at the corpse of the pimp for a moment and then stood up.
‘Mister?’ a timid voice said. I turned to look at the frightened girl MacFarlane had used as a shield. I didn’t answer her. Instead I reached down and searched MacFarlane until I found the pimp’s money roll. ‘You’re wrong, you know,’ the girl said. I peeled off some of the dirty euros and offered them to her. She snatched them out of my hand and I pocketed the rest.
‘Yeah? About what?’ I asked.
‘About it being a killer.’ I turned to look at her. ‘It’s not a killer, it’s beautiful,’ she said. I had no idea what she was talking about but something about her earnestness bothered me. I headed towards the internal stairs that would take me down to see one of the monsters that had killed so many of my friends. Was it psychologically healthier to want to have sex with an alien or just kill it? I wondered. You’d hope it depended on the circumstances.
5
Despite the ruin of my face I was feeling no pain as I edged my way down the stairway deeper into the ship. The subdued lighting and peeling red paint were a long-forgotten attempt at ambience, but now, to my drug-addled brain, they gave the place an other-worldly feel.
I reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. My hearing could pick up the sound of heavy breathing around the corner, the sound of nervous people shifting. I looked through thermographics but warm pipes and a multitude of people in surrounding rooms confused the images. I peeked around the corner and brought my head straight back as two nervous gunmen let rip with SMGs loaded with slugs too high a velocity for the weapons. The bullets ripped through the bulkhead where I’d been standing and continued on their path. I heard a scream. One of the stray bullets had caught a working boy somewhere deeper in the ship. I had retreated part the way back up the stairs.
‘It’s all over,’ I shouted. ‘Everyone’s dead. MacFarlane’s dead, you’re not working for anyone any more. Just walk away.’ There was a discussion between them as to the merits of my offer.
‘Bullshit, man!’ One of them shouted. ‘You’re government, you’re going to kill everyone who came into contact with it.’
‘Then why haven’t I?’ I asked, wondering why people made it so hard for me not to kill them. ‘Look it’s up to you, either you die here now or you take your chances and walk away.’ There was another discussion followed by the sounds of feet pounding metal. I glanced around the corner; both the gunmen had gone.
Leaning against the bulkhead, I replaced the shells in the Mastodon with disrupter rounds. They were specifically designed to inflict the most damage on the liquid flesh technology of Their bioborg killers. My hand was shaking. I was afraid. I had spent so much time Earth side, where nothing was frightening compared to the war. I’d forgotten what the fear was like.
The last time I’d faced a Ninja I had been armed to the teeth, pumped on combat drugs, aided by my squad, and many of them still ended up dead, not to mention the weirdness that happened to Gregor. If this was one of their Ninjas then it had better be very injured or I was screwed. It was then I heard movement from the next corridor.
Looking around the corner, I saw about twenty of the more upmarket (by rig standards) hookers heading into what I assumed was the captain’s cabin. Angry johns were following some of them. I pinched the bridge of my nose, crushing burnt skin; vague signals of pain pushed their way through the drugs and the nerve dampening. Unsure what to do, I made my way down the corridor, straight-arming one of the johns, who was trying to drag a teenage boy back to a cabin by the hair. I pushed my way through the hookers, a task made easier by my frightening burnt appearance, to the door of the stateroom.
It was definitely one of Them lying on the cabin bed. Manacles that presumably had been shackling him lay on the floor now. It was the most human-looking one I had ever seen. It was like a human-shaped and proportioned pool of oil, its head a smooth featureless black dome. There were no visible weapon appendages apparent but I knew that Their Ninjas were morphic. In terms of apparent physiology the only real difference was it had seven long fingers on both hands and it looked slightly smaller than the average human. The light formed rainbow-like reflections in its flesh and I could make out a distorted view of myself – for the first time I could see the burn damage.