‘Uh Jakob…’ Hamish began.
‘What? What!’ I demanded. ‘There’s enough there!’ I shouted.
‘Guess you didn’t hear I’m putting my prices up. Not to worry. There’s enough here for half a day and some credit for your next trip.’
‘No!’ I said, unable to believe, or at least cope with what I was hearing. In my mind I ran through the numerous ways in which I could kill or cause pain to Hamish. Of course some of them meant I would have to touch him. I lifted my prosthetic arm to punch the armoured cage that protected him. I felt rather than saw the cage’s protective systems activate, weapons unfolding from the walls and ceiling to cover me.
‘Now, now, calm down,’ the still-smiling Hamish said in a conciliatory and patronising tone. ‘I was just joking; a day it is.’
‘Really fucking funny, Hamish,’ I muttered, lighting another cigarette. There was an ever-so-slight shake in my left hand, the one that was still flesh. ‘You do know what I used to do for a living, right?’ I snapped.
‘You and everyone else round here, pal. Booth twelve’s free.’ I turned and stalked into the sense arcade.
Inside was a long corridor lit with dim red lights, many of which were broken. On either side of the corridor were reinforced steel doors. I found booth number twelve and looked up at the lens before the door and gave Hamish the finger, so of course he made me wait another minute. Finally the steel door shot up. Inside, a vet minus both his arms, one of his legs a jury-rigged and botched-looking home prosthetic, was sitting on the foam mattress of the bunk. He was still plugged in though obviously not receiving. He ignored me.
‘C’mon, man. That was never two hours. My daughter sent me the money for this. It’s her combat pay! She fights to keep you safe… I fought to keep you safe from Them, you bastard!’ he screamed into the air. Hamish was as ever deaf to this.
‘You and me both, pal,’ I said and grabbed the vet with my prosthetic arm, my left arm removing the plug. Augmented muscle slung him out the door and across the corridor into the other wall. I tried to ignore the sound of a homemade prosthetic snapping. The metal door rapidly slid down, cutting off the sobbing. The booth was red plastic. It smelled strongly of semen; some users had no imagination. I lay down in the niche that formed the bunk, sinking into the cheap foam mattress. I reached behind my head and inserted the jack into one of my plugs.
I was gone, immersed in the usual, the program that Vicar had written for me. Subtle, beautiful, other-worldly (though not in a way that would induce horrors) music played as one by one my senses were deprived, as I divorced from the self. I faded away. I stopped existing.
Everything that was me, the pain of wounds inflicted and received, the terror inflicted and received, all that I’d seen and done drifted away in a sense of profound dislocation. The things that I didn’t think the human mind was supposed to deal with, acts committed in the war against Them, the genocidal alien other locked in perpetual conflict with humanity, were gone. All that was left was an unfeeling abstract floating in nothing.
And just like that I was yanked back. As ever it was too short but this time something was not right. I checked my internal clock, a mere two hours. Enough was enough. I was going to find a way to kill Hamish; he was taking the piss now. I pulled the jack out from the back of my neck and slid off the bunk towards the door, but it did not slide open. I hit the manual door switch but nothing happened. I was getting concerned. This was beginning to feel like some kind of burn.
‘Hamish, you’re just making things worse for yourself,’ I said evenly. Just the slightest hint of threat in my tone, assuming that Hamish was listening.
On my internal visual display the integral communications link was flashing. Opening it up formed a small split screen in the corner of my vision. I recognised the man on the video comms link, short dark hair neatly trimmed, suave features, a degree of refinement to an underlying feeling of malice and violence. A warm smile belied by the absence of feeling in two very pale blue eyes.
I tried my best to remain passive in the face of the comms icon of a man I hated, a man who’d tried very hard to kill me.
‘Sergeant Douglas,’ the man said. He sounded genuinely pleased to see me. His tones educated and cultured, pure upper class of a vintage old enough to remember a time when breeding actually mattered.
‘Go and fuck yourself. I’m not in the army any more. You and I have nothing to say to each other.’
‘Nonsense, Jakob, mutineer or not you’re still a reservist.’ Major George Rolleston said, smiling again. ‘We have a code eleven, you’ve been reactivated.’ I barely gave this a second’s thought. A code eleven. XI. Xenomorphic Infiltration.
‘A bullshit wild goose chase. Get someone else. Turn my program back on.’
‘Don’t be like that, Jakob. I recruited you especially. After all, who more than I knows your efficiency?’
‘Even if I agreed to be reactivated-’
‘Nobody’s giving you the choice, Sergeant,’ Rolleston interrupted smoothly, breaking the unwritten rule of special forces etiquette again and using my rank.
‘Even if I decide to be reactivated,’ I reiterated through the sub-vocalised equivalent of gritted teeth. ‘I won’t work with you, you piece of shit.’ Rolleston merely smiled.
‘But Jakob, both Josephine and I are looking forward to working with you again,’ Rolleston said, and there was the threat, I thought. Josephine Bran, Rolleston’s pet killer, Royal Marine sniper, SBS with Rolleston and then seconded to Special Operations Command, someone that the other operators feared. A pale, quiet, unassuming girl, a shy girl who enjoyed and excelled at killing far too much, they called her the Grey Lady. She was the perfect servant for men such as Rolleston.
‘You turned on your own men. You tried to dump them; they served you and then you tried to space them.’
‘Perfectly legal and as per my orders,’ Rolleston said and it was true: a vagary of interstellar and colonial law had meant that there was a loophole covering the wholesale murder of a government’s own troops. A loophole that had since been removed in the outcry that followed the British government’s attempt to alleviate the social problems caused by special forces vets.
‘You tried to kill me, you bastard!’ I spat at him, losing my temper. Suddenly the smile disappeared from the Major’s face.
‘And you led a mutiny, a court-martial offence for which you and that journalist should have been executed.’ Then the smile returned to Rolleston’s cold face. ‘That reminds me. Have you heard from Howard recently?’ Suddenly I was even more suspicious. My co-conspirator in the troopship mutiny that had saved our lives and the lives of other special forces and intelligence operators had disappeared shortly after Earth fall. All attempts to find the whereabouts of Mudge had turned up nothing. The last I’d heard from him he said he was trying to find Gregor MacDonald, another disappearance that Rolleston had been involved in.
‘What do you know?’ I demanded. Because Rolleston knew all right: he’d have done something to Mudge. He’d know what happened to Gregor, he knew it all, and he knew I knew. He’d string me along on hope to get me to do what he needed. His smile disappeared.
‘Let’s stop messing around, Sergeant.’ The door to the sense booth opened. ‘You have been reactivated. You are back on full pay, and if you track the XI and bring this matter to a successful conclusion I will award you a bonus sufficient to fund your addiction for a week.’ I stepped out of the booth and looked up and down the corridor, almost expecting to see Private Josephine Bran waiting for me, but the corridor was empty.