Hurt U Back Read online

  “It’s too much to hope for, I suppose, but there is a theoretical possibility that you’re the kind of person who actually obeys orders, in which case this branch of Revenge Squad is now closed. Turn off the lights, lock the door and head back to Tata-West. Tell that bastard Philby that if I ever figure out this afterlife drent then I’m going to haunt his hairy ass until the day he dies. I’m gonna order my entire branch and everyone I used to command in the Navy to do the same, because that wixerer fully deserves all that and more.”

  Caccamo took a deep breath. I didn’t think he wanted to pause, but if he hadn’t resupplied his oxygen then he would have expired.

  A twinkle came to the eyes of the old Marine slash fighter pilot, transforming him instantly from growling sergeant major to charming old rogue. “Please excuse me,” he said with a bow. “I forgot my manners. As your commander, I warmly welcome you all to Port Zahir. Now off you fuck. Caccamo out.”

  The recording froze, and that was pretty much the reaction of everyone in the room. It was as if Caccamo had let off a silence grenade. But although we might look stunned into inactivity, the reaction of old hands like me was to spin our brains into overdrive to run through the tactical implications. For example, Caccamo looked as if he were dressed for the beach, but behind him I’d seen figures hastily adjusting body armor and tooling up with some serious military hardware. I thought I’d glimpsed a JX-52B shoulder launch missile system. Mother dog! Whoever had spooked Caccamo had wound him up to DEFCON Maximum, as they like to say on Earth.

  Predictably, given that he thought he was better than all of us, it was Chikune who broke the silence. “What do we do, boss?” he asked Silky.

  Silky thought for a moment. “I preferred the option where the director ripped my skull off and drank of my spinal fluids.”

  There was a pause where the older ones among us used our memory buffers to replay Caccamo’s speech in our heads. Apparently, Silky was claiming to be a deviant necromancer. That didn’t make a lot of sense, but then she often didn’t. Aliens rarely did.

  “You mean we’re going after them?” said César uncertainly, Shahdi by his side looking up at him expectantly.

  “Did you ever doubt it?” Silky replied.

  The room echoed with our cheers and cries. I mean really echoed. It wasn’t so much the volume as the lack of wall and floor coverings in the cavernous former warehouse space. Only the spider webs hanging from the brick walls, and the hooks hanging from tracks in the ceiling, soaked up the noise of our exuberance.

  And I was whooping with the best of them. Silky’s decision was dumb, and we all knew it, but after eons as isolated individuals it felt so good to be part of a team on a mission that for the moment, we didn’t care.

  It’s the end we always wanted as cadets, I told my ghosts. We’ll go down fighting in a blaze of stupidity. At least this way our posting in this craphole of a city won’t last long.

  They didn’t reply but I felt their disdain at my quip. That’s one thing I’ve learned about ghosts: when it comes to the topic of death, they’ve no sense of humor.

  In the real world outside of my head, the cheering had ebbed.

  Nolog-Ndacu stopped it altogether with a cutting motion from his oversized and lumpy hands. “Acting Assistant Squad Leader,” he begun cautiously, “although I endorse your audaciously optimistic plan for a search and rescue mission, a question troubles me.” That didn’t surprise me. Nolog was a Tallerman, a species of mineralized gnomes so desperately anxious about the unknown that going outdoors without a raincoat was considered psychotic enough to get you permanently redeployed to a mental institution. Nonetheless, despite being blockaded by caution, Tallermans had a habit of achieving the unimaginable through sheer doggedness.

  There was nothing in the known universe as stubborn as a Tallerman.

  “Go ahead, ask,” said my sort-of wife.

  Nolog half-submerged his head beneath his neck ridge. “Where the frakk did they go?”

  — CHAPTER 4 —

  The Star Shift Freight warehouse was so cavernous it swallowed my deliberately heavy footfalls.

  The place was largely robotized with semi-autonomous loader bots wheezing their way around the tracks that defined the limits to their world. However, there were a few humans supervising, and a couple of Gliesans were moving cargo items out of forty-foot-high storage racks ready for shipment.

  Another slender figure threw itself off a lofty shelf, unfurled her wings and glided down to a gaggle of workers forming in the center of the warehouse.

  Guess there were three Gliesans, then.

  A huddle of workers was forming around a short Marine-sized man with waxed white side burns that dropped over a foot below his jawline, giving him a vaguely shrimp-like appearance.

  It was very generous of this man to wear such easily identifiable whiskers because his shrimp face confirmed his identity as Mr. Hamrica Okane, a Revenge Squad client who triggered his retribution policy four days ago when this warehouse suffered arson, theft, and other forms of gratuitous abuse. Silky had ordered us to work our way back through the list of most recent cases, looking for leads. Okane was top of my list.

  I planted my big feet in a wide stance, folded my arms, and tried to apply a veneer of mania to my eyes. I couldn’t help noticing that warehouse operations had recovered to full health very quickly.

  “Mister Okane,” I bellowed, packing in the attitude of the most ill-tempered drill sergeant in history having a seriously bad day.

  That did the trick.

  You don’t need magical alien head lumps to tell a great deal from the way a person reacts in the instant they are challenged – before their logical brain comes online and makes people sly. Take the Gliesans for example. All three jerked down as if to push off and glide away from the unexpected threat. Most of the humans took a cautiously defensive stance, ready to resist if needs be.

  Not Okane. He fled.

  Here was a man with something to hide. Leaving his shocked workers in his wake, he ran for the exit out to the stockyard.

  I set off in pursuit.

  No one tried to stop me as I pushed through the fringe of insulating strips and out into a yard of pallets and stackable freight crates.

  I was born and bred an Assault Marine. Not just bred but engineered. In other words, I was supposed to drop from orbit in a little box of metal and plastic and not only survive the impact, but to deploy with my SA-71 and take contested ground. My old legs were not built for speed and as I caught sight of Okane disappear into the maze of crates, it was obvious that the younger man was outpacing me.

  I wasn’t worried, though.

  As I thundered along the sunlit yard, and followed Okane’s trail into the deeply shadowed labyrinth, I discovered him waiting for me. His arms were pinned behind by unnaturally white alien limbs, and pressure applied so he was yanked back onto his heels.

  I have met a few dockers in my time. I generally find them to be pretty hard nuts, and the way Okane marked himself out as special with his shrimpy whiskers suggested he thought of himself as a particularly tough guy.

  Not so tough now, is he? I said to my ghosts, because the docker was squealing like a little girl at the way Silky was running her stubby head tentacles over his neck.

  Personally, I found Silky’s lumps were very pleasant to touch, being soft and plump, and with a very fine down like chilled peaches. Not that I wanted this man stroking my Silky.

  “This is my alien sidekick,” I explained to Okane. “She doubles as a savage guard dog, and triples as an exotic pet because she’s a rare beast indeed. She’s a Mandagriac Mindsucker. The clue is in the name, my friend. She needs to consume minds as part of her sustenance.”

  Okane set his jaw against me. He seemed to think I was making this up.

  “Have you ever wondered why there are so many lost souls in Port Zahir,” I asked, “their minds lost in confusion and their motor functions compromised? You might have told yourself this was down t
o the corrosive effect of drink and drugs, and the difficulty of finding a purpose in a world without war. But deep down you must know those reasons don’t explain the sheer quantity of lost people stumbling around the darkest alleyways… as if the minds had been sucked dry.”

  Okane struggled, but Silky was too strong. “Get it off me!” he screamed.

  “That’s not so easy. Her feeding frenzy is upon her. She must feed and soon. If not your mind, then whose?”

  “I don’t care. Anyone. Try the wet docks. There’s plenty out there, looking for work each morning. They won’t be missed. Tantor Dock is your best bet. Hurry!”

  I chewed my lower lip, pretending to consider his suggestion. “Tantor Dock is a long way off. You don’t understand what a vicious brute she is when hungry.” I felt a sudden burning sensation in my mind, as if someone had taken a spicy sauce and injected it through my skull. This was the sensation I felt when Silky was angry with me. Was it possible that I had said something to upset her? “Already I can sense the ugliness rising within the alien beast,” I said. “Quickly, man, tell me clearly and truthfully what I need to know and I shall do my best to drag her from this place.”

  “Yes! Yes! Anything! What do you need to know?”

  “Why did you run?”

  He tried to shrug, but Silky pulled back his arms and he yelped as he lost his balance. “You. I ran from you, Marine. You look like bad news.”

  He screamed. I caught the side wash from the spike of fear Silky had sent into him. To hear this pitiful man, you would think she’d shoved his head into a vat of boiling oil, but the truth was Silky could do no more than send a jolt of emotion, an ability the Kurlei had evolved to confuse prey in the instant before they struck.

  Okane closed his eyes and began whimpering. “Save me. Save me. Save me.”

  “I don’t think she believed you, Mr. Okane. Would you like to try again?”

  What’s with all the excessive politeness? asked Bahati.

  Shut the frakk up, I told the ghost of my second wife. Can’t you see I’m busy working?

  “… thought you were with that lot who did over the warehouse a few days back,” said Okane.

  See? I missed the start of what he said.

  “Who?” I asked Okane, trying to make it sound like an accusation.

  “HUB. Hurt U Back. You’re HUB.”

  “Well you can rest okay with that. We’re Revenge Squad.” I showed him my ID badge for what it was worth. Luckily it didn’t say acting, unpaid next to my name and holo.

  “Let’s move this to your office,” I told Okane, hoping to find clues that would explain his guilty behavior. “Being indoors can calm the mind sucker, for a little while.”

  Silky loosened her grip, just enough to let Okane lead us back inside and into a modest but soundproofed office. I couldn’t wait for this business with the missing team to be resolved so I’d have someone to brag about this. Okane was actually buying my spur of the moment story about Silky. He even shouted to the workers on the way to the office, telling them to keep working and keep away while he had a few private words with us.

  It wasn’t much of an office. Just a few tables, chairs, and shelves. A stack of rigid smartscreens were stored in a tray near the door. A sticker on the tray said: ‘do not remove smartscreens from this room’. I itched to take a look at the devices because I felt sure they would tell me something about Star Shift Freight, but I knew my limitations and ‘digital’ was near synonymous with ‘magical’ in my vocabulary.

  Okane kindly reminded me that I was supposed to be questioning him when he asked, “Are you going to get her off me, or what?”

  “Mister Okane. I want you to describe your attackers. Who were they? How many? What equipment did they use?”

  “But, I’ve already told your investigators…”

  Silky growled. It wasn’t a human growl, closer to a lion’s. Mader Zagh! I had to squeeze myself tight to avoid soiling myself. By the color in Okane’s cheeks, I didn’t think he had been so successful.

  Since when had Silky been able to utter a noise like that? She scared me sometimes.

  I recovered quickly and pressed the attack. “I want makes of weapons. Vehicle descriptions.” I tapped him on the chest with one finger. “And I want it now.”

  The blood drained from Okane’s face, and he replied in a tiny voice, “I can’t. Please, I wasn’t there. It happened in the dead of night.”

  Crap. I hadn’t thought of that.

  Don’t be too hard on yourself, said Efia. You’re new at this.

  Silky growled and I nearly jumped out of my skin in my need to get away. It was only a noise, but it made a direct connection with a primal fear, like the sight of an arachnid scurrying over your flesh, because this time Silky was growling at me.

  I gulped. “Please,” I begged Okane, “give me something.”

  The docker was sweating now, any thought that we were bluffing long gone. “Bar – Bartoli,” he stammered. “He’s a watchman works nearby. Said he heard two trucks pull up around 2 a.m. He said they were big. A lot of lights and powerful engines. Serious kit. Would have been easier for them to break in through the loading bay, but they chose to blow the main doors off. They burned half my stores.”

  “And you think they were a team from Hurt U Back.”

  “That’s right.” A little steel came back into his eyes. “Your competitors.”

  “What makes you so sure they’re HUB?”

  Ouch! The steel in his eyes switched to contempt. “Because they sprayed frakking great HUB logos over my frakking wall. That’s how.”

  That was very clear in the report, Sanaa reminded me.

  Thanks for nothing, I told my first wife.

  “I don’t see any HUB symbols now,” I said.

  “I need to run a business, Mr. McCall. My insurance premiums have tripled and I have to explain to my customers why their goods went up in flames. I’m paying a lot of money to get everything back to normal, just as I paid Revenge Squad a large sum to take retribution on anyone who hurts me. What are you doing to justify my premiums?”

  You’ve lost him, said Sanaa. Time to withdraw.

  She was right, but I decided I didn’t like this veck and that deserved some retribution of my own. I pulled the docker up by his shirt collar, his legs kicking in the air. He was a big guy, but I was bigger. The fight went out of him.

  “I’ll tell you what we are doing, Mr. Okane. Finding out who is really behind all this.” I pulled his face up to mine so they were almost touching. “And when I decide who did this, I’m gonna take some gratuitous revenge on their ass.”

  Okane swallowed hard, an impressive reaction since I was half throttling him.

  I was about to drop him when something caught my eye. The desks in the office were mostly bare, but there was one by the far corner on which printed flyers and pamphlets were stacked neatly. It was that neatness that made me realize somebody valued them.

  At first I thought they were Legion propaganda. Bold statements in bold type faces about freedom and struggles and all that kind of stirring hurrah-rah stuff. This wasn’t from the Human Legion, though. This was local politics. Luckily for me, my eyes had been blown out in the war because the artificial replacements let me see the small print from across the room. From the slogans, it appeared that the rich and powerful stratum of Klin-Tula society was sucking the blood out of ordinary people, bending and restating the rules to entrench their privilege.

  I curled a lip at Okane, my turn for contempt. I knew that Marines on their first night of liberty like a drink and a poke, but I didn’t need a flyer to tell me that’s how the universe works.

  “That material isn’t illegal,” he said.

  “I never said it was. They are stating the obvious this…” I peered at the logo for this political movement. “The Cooperative for Equality and Smoothed Prosperity. I don’t disagree but if you want to play revolutionary, Mr. Okane, I suggest you do so with a movement who has worked a lit
tle harder on its name. Cooperative for Equality and Smothered Pomposity. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

  I dropped him to the ground and grinned at the way he smoothed his ruffled clothing, even though the smartfabric was already performing that function automatically.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Okane,” I told him. “Have a fruitful day.”

  — CHAPTER 5 —

  Three minutes and two blocks away from Hamrica Okane and his warehouse, Silky and I ducked around the back of an inactive loading robot and combined notes on our interview like good professionals should.

  “What the frakk was all that about have a fruitful day?” asked my partner.

  “I don’t know. I panicked.” I added sheepishly, “It was supposed to sound more threatening.”

  “Yeah, like that worked, NJ. Hey, everyone! Don’t mess with those scary vecks at Revenge Squad. Piss them off badly enough and they might wish you a fruitful day.”

  “Give me a break. Anyway, what was with your roaring? What are you, a wild animal?”

  “When I want to be.” She gave me an odd, sidelong look. “There’s nothing wrong with being passionate.”

  “Passion? That wasn’t passionate. That was someone doing an impression of a small, feral dog. It was adorable really.”

  Actually, her roar had been anything but adorable, but I didn’t feel like telling her that until later. I was too busy frowning at her for mocking me.

  Silky widened her pupils far beyond what was humanly possible. “I can do adorable,” she said, flashing me a coquettish look.

  I couldn’t hold my frown. I burst out laughing and gave her a comradely slap on the shoulder. “Yes you can,” I agreed. “And, honestly? Your roar scared the crap out of me.”

  I hadn’t meant to knock her to the ground, but I forgot how light she is. She was laughing as she got to her feet and gave me a comradely head-butt against my shoulder that made me fall back onto the solid metal of the loading robot. My laughter grew even heartier.