Scat (Scat's Universe, Book 1)

By Jim Graham

Whose DNA will escape a depleted Earth: yours or the one per cent’s?
Who owns your new world: you or the company?
And do you dare speak your mind on a world where the board owns the very air that you breathe?

Welcome to Scat’s universe, where companies rule, regulators are corrupt and democracies are financially bankrupt; where one company will soon turn its back on a desperate, resource-poor Earth to build a galactic empire of its own.

As powerful interests collide, one man is condemned for a murder he did not commit; a murder that kick-starts a rebellion.

Join ex-Marine killing-machine Sebastian Scatkiewicz as he takes on the biggest corporation of them all in the biggest land-grab ever.

For independence. For Freedom. For revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Graham
• Release date: Oct 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9789881575319

Jim Graham

Jim was born in Bushey, Middlesex, England and grew up in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. He passed selection for the 21st Special Air Service Regiment at age 17 and was later commissioned into the 3rd Battalion, The Queen’s Regiment as a Second Lieutenant. He spent several years in Northern Ireland during the late 70s and early 80s. Since leaving the army in 1986, he has worked in Malaysia, South Africa, Belgium, Singapore and Hong Kong. Jim started writing scifi in September 2010 and has since published SCAT and BIRDIE DOWN, both based on events in Scat’s Universe. ARMY of SOULS, the sequel to SCAT is also available from Amazon and Smashwords. SCAT is a big 'what if'. ARMY of SOULS is more of a 'what now'. Both are space operas, which question political systems, economic dependency, compromised regulators, and too big to fail businesses, and go on to question conflict between knowledge and faith. BIRDIE DOWN and the up-coming PHARMA are rebellion 'shoot 'em ups'. Jim now lives with Vivien, his Malaysian-born wife, two East Asian street dogs and four pampered cats in Asia’s World City, Hong Kong. It is the company-run city which inspired Go Down City and the Lynthax Corporation in Scat’s Universe.

Book preview

1

The Sinai Peninsula, Egypt

23rd July 2203

Sebastian Scatkiewicz’ orders were straightforward enough: escort a member of the local survey team into the Sinai and bring him back in one piece. The only trouble was, the area was inside the Neutral Zone, and the Asian Bloc might not like it.

‘This time it’s different, right, Rose? This time you’ll find something?’ he asked, throwing his pack into the Roland 2’s passenger cabin.

Above his head, the blades began to rotate and the engines whirl. From deep inside the dark interior, a taller and much older man raised his voice in reply.

‘We’re as certain as we were the last time, Scat. You know the drill.’

Scat shook his head. He did know the drill: a week in a dusty hellhole with no air cover to speak of; the constant sniping from the locals; a final shake of the head; and, as was so often the case, the empty-handed return home. On occasion, a body bag in the hold.

‘Well it’s getting sodding lame,’ he said under his breath. ‘Find something of value this time, will you?’

Scat hoisted himself up onto the airframe to sit facing outwards, his legs dangling over the side. He grabbed the port gunner’s spare safety harness, clipped it to his belt and tugged. It held.

As his team settled down, he looked out across a pitch-black airfield apron. Well, at least they got the weather right: it was a moonless night, and the cloud cover was low and thick in the east. Directly above him, the ever-present atmospheric pollution scattered the ambient light from the camp behind.

The team net crackled with a familiar voice.

‘All secure, sir.’

Scat glanced over his shoulder and saw Corporal Henderson—Slaps to his friends—raising a thumb. He then heard the loadmaster give the all clear to the flight crew.

The stripped-down Roland trembled a little as it lifted off the ground, but it soon calmed down to sway, more smoothly, a few feet above the concrete. Seconds later, it dropped its blunt nose and surged forward, funnelling hot desert air through the doorless cabin. Under his feet, Scat watched a sand-dusted replica of small town America slip past, swathed in light. Then they were beyond the camp perimeter, soaring out into a bleak and unwelcoming desert.

The journey time to the drop-off point, some 80 miles across the canal, was 17 minutes. That gave Scat plenty of time to mull over what Rose had told them as they were getting ready.

‘It’ll be over soon, Scat,’ he had said. ‘They’ve finally decided who gets what.’

‘Yeah?’ Scat had replied as he and Henderson kept their heads down, charging their magazines. They had little interest in anything Rose had to say, but, over the past few months, the old man had learned how to get in their faces and was increasingly hard to avoid.

‘Yep!’ Rose continued, ‘Raddox is exchanging its Micronesian marine mining interests for what’s left of the coal in Western Australia. The Brit PM had talks with their shareholders last night. He finally won them around.’

Scat had looked up. He had no interest in politics. He only knew they were fighting this war in the national interest: to secure the rapidly dwindling resources needed to keep the West’s industry running and its products affordable. He certainly did not want to believe they were fighting to bolster some company’s assets, even if they were constantly mopping up after them—as were the rest of the Western military. Scat then gave Henderson a look, knowing he felt the same way.

‘So, the last few months have been about shareholder’s rights, have they?’ Scat asked, sceptically. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I guess so,’ Rose replied. ‘Eh, it’s not my fault, Scat. I just work for the sons.’

‘But why would Raddox have any say in how the war finishes?’

Rose had shaken his head in mock sympathy.

‘You’re being block-headed again, Scat. Remember what I said the first time around? It’s for the very same reason they had when they decided the war should start: for profit. And now it’s all about the final scramble. It’s all about where we’ll be standing when the treaty’s signed.’

When they had spoken about the war before, Rose had made it plain what he thought about Scat and others like him: he was a cliché; a dedicated and well-trained killing machine; an earnest man and a capable officer, committed to leading his men and women to hell and back. But he was also a naïve and easily led fool who was willing to believe anything his President told him, and that he, as with others like him, was going to be a hugely disappointed man when the war was over, and the free presses were up and running again.

That had gotten Scat’s hackles up at the time, and the bugger was doing it again. Scat just did not want to believe it. The war-for-profit motive was the conspiracy theory: the one the suck-weed Asian Bloc spread to sap the morale of the Western Bloc’s troops, to undermine the spirits of his compatriots.

Henderson was the first to respond, mindful that Rose held courtesy rank in the field:

‘Go screw yourself. Sir!’

Scat could only echo the sentiment.

Rose was a dick and a supercilious, overpaid shit. Few of Scat’s soldiers liked these company men, even though they envied them their incomes and would try hard to win off-world jobs with their companies when their time was up.

Sure, the war was all about resources—no one disputed it: everyone of the world’s 21 billion population hankered after what was left of them. Rock-scratchers like Rose were everywhere. They would arrive with armfuls of data, a few maps and a hard-on for drilling in someone else’s back yard, relying on Marines like Henderson to keep them safe. Then they would bugger off, back to Washington and their bonuses, along with a case for temporarily annexing yet another swathe of someone else’s country. More often than not, the local chiefs would invite them in, hoping the West would support their agenda for regime change.

But it was no different across the line: the Abs were the same. Their populations needed resources, just as the West did. They had mouths to feed, industry to prime, populations to employ.

Nonetheless, Rose was talking crap: the resource companies had not started the war, even if they did profit by it. And, in any case, their cost of doing business was only subsidised by dead Marines, crushed families, and what was left of the national treasury, because it was in the country's best interest. The President had said so. That somehow made it right. It gave Scat the conviction he needed to carry on, regardless.

But now the war was ending, Scat felt a little unsettled. He was not sure what that would mean for him.

The Roland’s internal speakers crackled again with a simple warning.

‘Insertion in five.’

Scat raised a hand. Behind him, the five others in his team went through their pre-insertion rituals.

Marine Dahl, the youngest and smallest of them all, pulled at a chain around his neck, fished out his dog tags, and took a last minute look at a small photo pasted to the back of one of them. He kissed it, and then tucked it away.

Old Man Philips, at 27 the oldest member of the team, mumbled something to himself, his eyes closed. He looked calm. He always was. He still believed in a God, even at his age.

Across the cabin, sitting next to Rose and facing forward, Marine Jenny Bruce checked the charge indicator of her Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser, or PIKL, commonly referred to as a pickle for the damage it did to a target’s internal organs. She was still testing the latest variant, a dark-light version, on behalf of Branston, its manufacturer. Seeing it was at full power, she looked up at Scat and smiled at him, knowing he was dying to take it from her.

Trillion Tang, the tallest and broadest Marine in the squad at six feet three inches and a touch more than two feet wide at the shoulders, took his feet off the bench in front of him and planted them in the regulation position on the cabin floor. That was it. He was about the least flappable Marine Scat had ever met. Nothing fazed him. Not ever.

Corporal Henderson was doing what he normally did this close to an insertion. He leaned out of the far side, looking down, drumming his fingers against the airframe. He was nodding his head, rhythmically, as though listening to music. He did that a lot. He would be running a rap song through his head, a violent one. He said it got him in the mood.

They were ready.

Scat looked down at himself, hoping to see all of his body parts again when they got back. He may not be tall, or built like Atlas, but he was fit, quick and supple; his trim, well-toned body more than capable of humping 120 pounds of equipment for days without complaint—even though his stamina was years from peaking. In a world of short-term contracts, mass-unemployment and minimal welfare, he had to stay in one piece.

The loadmaster tapped him on his shoulder and shouted into his ear.

‘Thirty seconds.’

Scat looked up at the flight deck bulkhead monitor. There were no alarms, no heat signatures. The insertion point was cold. He pulled the butt of his Garand solid-shot sniper rifle tightly into his right shoulder.

The Roland tilted backwards as it began to slow, its engines growling a little more. He could see a wide, boulder-strewn wadi carving a gash into the ground below them, its steep black sides shepherding it down the hillside in lazy sweeps.

They were going in.

Scat released the gunner’s harness and pushed his feet down on the footplate, ready to leap out. The loadmaster tapped him on his helmet twice.

‘Go, go, go!’ the man urged.

As the Roland hovered, six heavily clad bodies scrambled for the port side exit and dropped the few feet onto the uneven scree. Behind them, the loadmaster kicked their backpacks out into a maelstrom of grit and desert sand. On the ground, the Marines scooped them up, threw them across their shoulders and trudged heavily towards the wadi’s edge.

A few seconds later, Rose made the jump and then dashed across the wadi to crouch inside the Marines’ protective circle. Out on the scree, a large rubber pouch, filled with the ground-penetrating radar and other tools of his trade, was dangled over the side and lowered to the floor. Dahl and Tang ran back into the storm to drag it across.

Scat opened his pack, flipped the lid of a box and set free a colony of dragonfly surveillance drones. He switched the colony from test to deploy and, in an instant, they were gone, lost against the dark backdrop of the wadi wall. Moments later, he held his hand up and made circles with his finger as a signal to the team that the colony was sending signals back. Henderson and Bruce both switched on their wrist-mounted monitors to track their assigned perimeter arcs.

Out front, the loadmaster knelt in the open doorway and waved goodbye; the Roland dropped its nose to haul itself back into the night; and, just as they had on countless insertions before this one, the Marines listened to the sounds of their arrival die away.

Then they waited.

2

Scat sat in the shade of a large rock, spooning beef-flavoured tofu mush from a can. He licked the spoon until it shone, turned it over and took a quick glance at an insect bite on his cheek. It was swelling; inflating a long, gaunt face that had long ago shed most of its flesh. The rest of him looked no better. His hazel eyes were bloodshot and sank deep inside their sockets. Sweaty hair crept from the high, straight hairline and stuck to his forehead. The fresh, doe-like look was gone, lost alongside the natural optimism of youth. He needed a break, and yet here they were, still, aimlessly walking around a hot, barren, desolate lunar landscape looking for something that someone, somewhere, wanted so badly they were willing to antagonise the locals and risk an uneasy peace.

It was the fourth such outing in two weeks, and yet, two days in, Rose was still coming up empty.

The satellite had suggested there was a deposit deep down inside the earth’s crust, and all the survey team needed to do was to confirm what the damned thing was telling them. Nonetheless—even though the local chief had promised them a free ride, and they could range more freely than on most other days—the mission looked a bust. Every so often and with a marine in tow, Rose would break away to scan deep down into the ground, only to come back with a glum look on his face.

As he just did.

Scat watched Rose traipse across the scree towards him, looking a little pensive.

‘Another blow-out, Rose?’ he asked.

Rose sat down with his back against a large boulder and threw his lanky legs out in front of him. He wiped his brow with a paisley handkerchief and then leaned forward to massage his thighs.

‘It’s not looking too hot, Scat. The satellite imagery was promising. It’s just not translating. There should be a large deposit of the stuff in this area—in fact, just below our feet. But sod knows it’s playing hard to find.’

‘Another blow-out, then?’

‘Unconfirmed for now, Scat,’ Rose pointed out.

‘And you still ain’t saying what you’re looking for?’

Rose failed to rise to the bait so they rested in silence for a few moments. Scat looked up and along the nearside of the 300-yard-wide wadi to check that his two sentries were OK. The others were napping.

‘In fact, if this war’s over soon, as you say it is, why the blazes are we here at all?’ Scat asked.

Rose stood, arched his back and then went behind the boulder to take a pee.

‘Because it’s valuable stuff, Scat,’ he shouted back. ‘Peace or no, we still need it.’

Scat noticed Rose’s voice had an edge to it. The man was frustrated, or anxious.

‘So why not get a license to prospect for it,’ Scat asked, ‘pay the friggin’ locals to dig it up, and then buy it off them?’

‘Because it’s been this way for 50 years,’ Rose replied, testily. ‘It won’t change. In fact, it’ll only get worse. We’ll sign this shagging treaty, it’ll last for a few years, and then we’ll be poaching again, just as both sides do right now. Get used to it, Scat. Get with the programme.’

Scat spirits lifted a little. He had riled the jerk at last. He leaned back and pointed up to a light blue and empty sky, blown clear of clouds and grey-brown pollution by a weak khamsin breeze.

‘So why are we still kicking each other’s butts down here, Rose, if there’s so much of it up there? That’s where the resources are now, right? Out there? Isn’t that why the companies all but own the New Worlds—so they can bring the stuff back here?’

This time Rose did not answer.

‘And while we’re at it,’ Scat continued, ‘why bother with it up there, if we’ve blown each other to kingdom come down here? Don’t you need consumers who can buy the crap your company makes?’

Rose returned from behind the boulder carrying his pack, pulling at one of its zips.

‘We still kick each other’s butts, Scat, because when we find it, it’s still cheaper to drag it out of the ground here, than it is from up there. And I’ll remind you that we don’t make anything. We just find the stuff that industry needs to make things with.’

Scat sneered at him.

‘Yeah, like those friggin’ useless hologram-pads—which 99% of us can’t afford and don’t need … and for a life-sucking profit. Does the State Department charge you for any of our services?’

Rose forced a chuckle.

‘Scat, when are you going to crawl out from under a rock? Do you really think they do?’

‘I guess not, then. So, you freeload. We thought as much.’

Scat didn’t listen for an answer. He put his trash in his pack, blew some dust off his rifle and gave the order to move on again. Tang and Dahl grabbed the rubber survey bag, giving Rose a dirty look: he never offered to carry the heavy stuff. Bruce took up point as Philips and Henderson brought up the rear.

An hour’s walk later, they arrived a few hundred yards short of that night’s planned campsite. Scat had selected it from a satellite photo, so he went ahead to check the surrounding ground before confirming it could be adequately secured. As was usual when walking through the Neutral Zone with civilians in tow, they were settling in early for the night: civilians were notorious for crashing around in the dark and, besides, Rose wasn’t that fit and could only walk so far each day.

Scat positioned two 2-man teams in makeshift hides outside of camp to cover the most likely approaches. When they were in place, he let Rose unpack his survey gear for the umpteenth time that day: this time to give it a thorough clean. Tang did the same with his sniper rifle.

Ping!

Crump!

Familiar sounds reverberated along the wadi walls. Scat stooped slightly, looking around him. Rose froze. Tang dragged Rose down to the ground and then deeper into cover behind a tumble of loose rocks.

Scat cocked an ear. He could just make out the distant blat of solid shot being fired and the tube-like plop of rifle grenades being launched, probably from under the barrel of an S-122 assault rifle. They would be anti-personnel.

The broken ground and heat shimmer made it hard to identify where the firing posts were, but as the solid shot passed high overhead, they were no longer flying supersonically. There was no familiar crack, just a fizz, like a small-calibre flechette round at the far end of its range. The grenades were exploding a long way short of camp. It suggested the people doing the firing were a long way away.

Scat looked back at Rose and spoke unhurriedly to Tang.

‘Make sure he stays down. I’ll go and find out what’s going on.’

Scat unclipped his helmet from his pack and put it on his head. Tan did the same. This wouldn’t be the first time a Marine had blundered into someone else’s shooting war. The locals were always taking a pop at each other.

The team net came to life with a female voice.

‘Boss? It’s Bruce. Whack Jobs. A convoy of them on the main road. About a mile east. They’re just shooting up our side of the wadi.’

Scat already had the lay of the land imprinted in his head. They had travelled 10 miles over two days. Today they had snaked their way southwards, down a wide, shallow and waterless wadi, towards the Newabaa-Taba highway which ran north to south across their path. Their camp was on the inside bend of the wadi, just before it turned to meet the road about a mile and a half away.

He looked at his watch and then up at the sky. It was still only five pm. It would not be truly dark for another three to four hours.

‘How many, do you think?’ he asked.

There was no immediate reply.

More cracks as rounds hit rock; more dull cruds as the occasional rifle grenade exploded in the wadi, still a long way short of camp. Scat could see none of it.

‘Bruce?’

Some static and then:

‘—of them,’ she replied. ‘Maybe a few more. They’re out of their vehicles and strung out, firing this way. Just laying down fire.’

‘How many?’

‘About 60.’

‘That’s my count as well, Scat.’ It was Henderson. He was acting as Bruce’s spotter. ‘It’s kind of weird, though. They just pulled up and started firing. They aren’t aiming at anything worth shit—all they're doing is spitting lead in this general direction.’

Scat mulled that over. Bruce and Henderson’s hide was up the side of the wadi, a little way east of camp, so they had the better view. Dahl and Philips were most probably unsighted: they were a little further back and higher still, covering a wadi that joined theirs from across the way.

Tang made his way over at a crouch and flopped down beside him. The occasional round passed high overhead.

‘You catch that, Tang?’ Scat asked.

‘Yes, sir. Whack Jobs.’

Scat stared out across the wadi. That changed things. Whack Jobs were the local paramilitaries the Asian Bloc funded to make a Western Bloc soldier’s life difficult—at least, more difficult than it already was. They received their training from the Abs or Abos—Asian Bloc insurgency operatives—working out of Cairo. They were whacko by nature, and the Marines whacked them for a living. Their mostly dirt-poor and overburdened families offered them up to the Abs as errand boys, fighters or suicide bombers, in return for cartons of cigarettes and fistfuls of hard currency—usually the mighty Redback, the Chinese Yuan. The region had a long and sordid history of earning its hard currency in that way. More often than not, the local chiefs acted as intermediaries, taking their cut.

But 60 of them? In the middle of nowhere? Shooting up the desert?

Scat floated a thought:

‘Training?’

Henderson described what he was seeing.

‘Doubt it. They’re being chivvied on by some guy in uniform. … He’s looking this way using binos. And, yeah, from what I can see he’s wearing light tans.’

OK, Scat thought, so at least one of the buggers was wearing Abo desert fatigues, but there was no point in sending Battalion a contact report until he knew for sure that the Whack Jobs were gunning for his team: the resulting flap would kill the mission.

He thought about deploying the dragonflies again, to get a closer look, but remembered the swarm was recharging, and he may have a greater need of them during the night.

Scat turned back to Tang and Rose. Rose had dragged his survey equipment a little further back behind a rocky outcrop, and he was now staring out.

‘Looks like they know we’re here, or hereabouts,’ Scat noted. ‘They’re trying to flush us out.’

Rose looked down at the ground. Tang curled his lower lip and nodded.

Scat pointed at Rose.

‘You!’ he said. Rose looked up. ‘Start packing.’ Then, more quietly: ‘Tang, look after him. I’m going to spend some time with Jenny—to get a look-see. You keep an eye on our rear.’

Tang took a few steps up the side of the wadi and looked back, trying not to raise his head any higher than he needed.

‘Anything?’ Scat asked.

‘No. We aren’t surrounded. Not as far as I can see ...’

‘Bruce? How long do we have on your side.’

It was Henderson who replied.

‘They aren’t in a hurry, sir. I’d give us 15 minutes. Maybe more.’

‘OK. I’ll be there in a few minutes.’ Scat turned back to face Tang. He pointed at Rose again. ‘Keep this one out of trouble.’

Scat made his way up to where he had sited Bruce’s hide, sticking carefully to the emergency route in and out. Bruce was nestled a little way up the wadi’s side, in a crease of ground large enough for one person. She had to wriggle her way back and out, before Scat could move in.

‘You thinking of taking your total to more’n 30, sir?’ she asked. ‘Cos if you are, it ain’t fair. I can far-arc any one of ‘em with this pickle just as easy as you can with that solid-shot.’

Scat smiled as he unbuckled his helmet.

‘I know that Jenny,’ he replied, waiting for her to ease all the way out. ‘But we gotta think of your reputation. We can’t have you farking every man you come across.’

As he squeezed past her and settled into place, Bruce caught the pun. She nudged his leg playfully with her boot.

A few yards off to their left, Henderson kept up a continuous commentary of what was going on along the enemy line. Out front, the Whack Job line resembled a chaotic jumble of half-kneeling, half-standing, migrant workers. The light tans looked like field bosses urging them on. None of the Whackos appeared overly keen. Some were plainly reluctant. Either way, they stood out clearly against the light wadi floor. When Scat was ready, Henderson guided him to the light tan who appeared to be running the show.

There the Abo was—some three-quarters of a mile out. He was walking through the sparse scrub that had taken hold closer to the road, taking care not to catch his trousers on the thorns. The scope magnified the Abo officer a dozen times. He looked southern Indian, a Tamil perhaps, maybe a Sri Lankan: it was hard to tell with him slowly floating around inside the scope. In any case, he was not directly looking this way. He was waving his hands at the tee shirts and ragheads to his left and right, occasionally grabbing one by an arm to pull him away from his friends, to stop them from bunching. He was young, a junior officer. In the grand scheme of things, then, he was no more than a gofer. It would be an easy and trouble-free kill. Scat thought that might as well take the shot himself.

Scat ignored the range finder: the Abs had gotten remarkably adept at ducking for cover when their target-marking sensors went off. He would do it the old-fashioned way: the way he had trained his team to make a kill when their active aids were either dead or fried.

It was a downward shot. Scat watched the dust move at a distance half way to the target, and around the target itself. He estimated the light breeze to be around three to five miles an hour, cutting diagonally from over his right shoulder towards the target. The air was arid. The satellite map gave him the distance to a cluster of boulders in the centre of the wadi—his range marker. Finally, he added in the angle of depression to the target. Once done, he asked Bruce and Henderson for their numbers. They were remarkably close.

He adjusted the scope and selected an armour-piercing round, just in case the beggar was wearing something under that beautifully pressed field uniform of his. He pressed down into his elbow pads, locked them into place and aimed at a point just below the Abo’s throat. If the elevation were off, the round would hit something between the middle of his chest or the top of his head. If he had gotten the wind wrong, he would hit something a couple of inches either side. Whichever way it went, the guy would go down.

As Scat waited for the Abo officer to draw level with the boulders, the Garand sensed he was preparing for a shot: a round was in the breach and the breach-barrel assembly was locked and set to float; Scat had turned on the passive in-scope target tracking software, and it was his eye behind the sight. Now the Garand’s computer was sensing the Abs motions in the scope, tracking the spot Scat had marked just below his throat. As it did so, it applied minute, almost indiscernible adjustments to the rubber muscles inside the barrel’s outer sleeve, to keep the barrel aligned with the target as it moved fractionally inside the sight.

Three breaths later, Scat applied two-point-five pounds of pressure to the trigger. At a speed of three thousand feet per second, the 0.5 calibre, 2-long round burst from the barrel, the recoil kicking hard into his shoulder.

From further up, Henderson tracked the atmospheric disturbance as the round punched its way through the air, eager to make its way down the gentle slope towards the road. Out front, Whack Jobs hit the ground and scrambled away from a cloudburst of blood as the light tan’s head split like a melon under a hammer.

Henderson was full of praise. It had been a long shot. When the scope settled again, the light tan was already down. Scat lowered his aim a few mils in search of the kill. When he found him, Scat could see the Abo had dropped directly to his knees before slumping over onto his left side. The dead man now lay on his back with a knee pointing upwards. Scat could not see much of the Abo’s head: the skull was shattered and flattened. The face was now a torn rubber mask, lying on the floor.

Either side of the body the Abo line wavered.

Scat put his trigger finger to his lips and reversed out of the hide. Jenny handed him his helmet.

‘Thanks, Jen,’ he said, dusting himself off. ‘Get back in there. Keep an eye on them. If they move forward again, let me know.’ He pulled his mike a little closer to his mouth. ‘Tang, you can send that contact report.’

Scat picked his way carefully between the jagged rocks and headed back down the slope. As he slide down the final stretch of scree, Battalion terminated the mission and told the team to prepare for a daylight extraction. That meant deploying a couple of fully armed gunships in support, but, with a peace conference coming up, that request had to go up the line: to Brigade, to Central, to the Pentagon, and then to the lawyers. The last thing anyone wanted to do was escalate a long-distance exchange of rifle fire up to a serious air-to-ground action—not in the Neutral Zone, and not without the political cover.

Shaking his head, Scat briefed the team by radio.

‘OK, everyone! Things don’t feel right, so we’re leaving. But we aren’t bugging out until I’ve checked the route back to the rallying point.’

Everyone but Philips acknowledged the message.

Dahl spoke up:

‘I can see him, sir. He’s OK. Comms problems, most likely.’

‘OK,’ Scat replied. ‘If you need to bug out, make sure you bring him with you.’

The rallying point was a place where everyone could regroup in the event the main camp was overrun. Theirs was a mile back up the wadi. They had all seen it on the way into camp.

Scat had an uncanny talent for reading a tactical situation, and he felt uneasy about this one. It seemed odd that the Whack Jobs were laying down fire without knowing exactly where to aim. OK, so they would make their way up the wadi and stumble across his team eventually, but nothing the Whack Jobs were doing made any sense. He was sure the whole thing was a ruse, to get their small team to run back up the wadi and into an ambush prepared by a more professional force: and in this part of the world, the only professional soldiers worthy of taking on the Marines, with any hope of success, were the Asians.

Except Tang was right. There was no evidence of anyone on the route back up the wadi. He had jog-walked right up to the rallying point, and even scoped out the ground a few hundred yards beyond it: there was nothing to see.

Eyes stinging and mind racing, Scat got back on the radio to check on his team. Henderson brought him up to date: the firing line had stopped a half mile out and settled down to fire the occasional shot. No one was really trying hard to press home the attack.

‘OK,’ Scat said. ‘I got that. Stay where you are for now. Save your ammo. Tang, how’s Rose? He ready yet?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Tang replied. ‘We’re waiting on you.’

‘Alright then. Get yourselves up here.’

Scat then sat down to think some more.

The rallying point was located next to a large rectangular boulder, a huge, flat-topped slab that had collapsed into the wadi sometime during a flash flood. Boulders littered the wadi, of course, but this one was on the shoulder of a junction with a smaller wadi that ran off to the east. It stuck out of the scree at a 45-degree angle, pointing one of its sharp ends northwards. It was big enough and odd-looking enough for everyone to notice it, even at night and in a mild panic. That was why he had chosen it. He remembered baiting Rose as he had taken a leak behind it on the way down.

Then Scat thought he remembered Rose carrying a bag ... and pulling at a zip. That caused him to get up and walk behind the rock to peer into the shadows. Something blinked red. It blinked again.

‘Well I’ll be a whore’s uncle!’

It was a beacon.

3

Scat strode back along the wadi until he came across Tang and Rose walking towards him, sharing the load of the rubber survey bag, both soaked in sweat. As Scat walked up to them, he slung his rifle and unclipped the flap to his pistol holster. Without stopping, he grabbed Rose by the scruff and dragged him out into the wadi.

Rose yelped and struggled, only to get his legs in a tangle. A little way out, Scat kicked his legs from under him and threw him onto his back. When Rose got to his hands and knees, Scat kicked him in the stomach.

‘Are you sure you haven’t found anything, Rose?’ he asked, stepping back, ready to kick him again.

Tang had seen Scat lose his temper before, but usually with good reason, and most times it was over quickly, so he sat down on a rock and waited for the rage to pass. In front of him, Rose sat back on his heels and held his arms around his stomach. He then doubled up and wretched into the scree.

Scat kicked him a second time, this time in the head. Rose slumped down onto his back, trying to wave a hand in a plea for Scat to stop.

Scat reached into his map pocket and pulled out the smashed beacon. He yanked Rose’s head up by the hair and pushed it into his face.

‘Say something damned quickly, Rose, or I’ll put a bullet in you and then leave you here for the roaches.’

Rose mumbled something, realised he was not making much sense, and then spat out a tooth.

‘So you found it, then?’ the old man said, rubbing his jaw and trying real hard to focus his eyes.

‘Yes I did,’ Scat answered. ‘Fancy that.’ He tossed the beacon back over his shoulder.

‘Don’t take it to heart, Scat,’ Rose replied as he sat up. ‘Nothing personal.’

‘I take being shot at very personally, Rose. Or weren’t you aware of that?’

Rose laughed but immediately clutched his sides in pain. When the wave subsided, he got to his feet and leaned forward with his hands on his knees. He looked up.

‘Of course I’m aware of it Scat. Who wouldn’t be? The Hero of Suez. Too friggin’ proud to play the game the way it’s meant to be played. Banished to babysit people like me.’

Scat looked across at Tang, reliving a painful memory. The older marine had been with him in Ismailia during the evacuation of the Marine Airmobile Base and had seen Scat kill the Whack Job’s Abo paymaster. The trouble was the beggar was also the Cairo-based Chinese military attaché and he had enjoyed diplomatic immunity. By convention Scat should have let him go, unharmed, but at the time, Scat was thinking that maybe the Whack Jobs should not have their acts of self-destruction witnessed by the same person who signed off on the money. Instead, he had tracked him in his scope and whacked him. Within hours, and as the news spread that the moneyman was dead, the nerve-wracking suicide bombings halved.

At the time, Tang confirmed the kill and slapped Scat on the back. Later that night, Scat’s team bought him drinks. In its daily sitrep to Central, his unit wrote it up as an unavoidable consequence of the fog of war. During a flash visit, the General commanding Middle East Central tore him off a strip before shaking his hand. Then the blogosphere got wind of it, and it morphed into a political circus.

Inside of two weeks, Scat had gone from hero to zero. Here he now was, six months later, still babysitting rock-scratchers; still awaiting a disciplinary hearing that no one was hurrying to convene.

‘So, what’s the plan?’ Scat asked.

‘Plan?’ Rose asked.

‘Yes, you suck-weed. How were you supposed to screw us over?’

Again Rose laughed.

‘You don’t get it, do you, Scat. I’m not screwing you over: I’m handing the Asian Bloc the last untouched deposit of copper in the Middle East. We were never going to commit troops until I’d proven it—not with the peace talks going so well. All I needed to do was tell our boys I couldn’t prove it and tell the Abs I had.’

Scat’s expression changed from out-and-out anger to one of disappointment. He then realised just how audacious Rose’s plan was. He nodded a few times to show Rose he was impressed, but that was it. There was no way Scat was going to understand the moral bankruptcy that could excuse what Rose was attempting to do, either quickly or easily. Greed was no excuse for treason, double-cross, and deception—not in Scat’s world.

‘The Abs will be here soon,’ Rose added, ‘and once they are, our people won’t dare make a fuss. All you need to do is throw your hands up, or run away. Or—as you’d put it—make an orderly withdrawal. Don’t you see?’

Rose could not avoid being his usually condescending self, but Scat sensed that what this old man was saying was probably true: the story fit the events. Maybe that’s why the attack was not being pressed home, and the route back up the wadi was being left clear—to let them get out of the area. Or maybe just for Rose to get clear.

‘So it’s business?’ Scat asked, watching Rose wipe his chin of blood with a sleeve.

‘Of course it is,’ Rose replied as if there could be no other explanation. ‘The war’s almost over, for Christ’s sake! As I said, what matters now is where we’re standing when the music stops.’ He turned his head to spit some blood out into the scree. It hissed a little as it hit a hot stone and then went a shade darker.

Scat still had questions.

‘But why the Abs?’

‘Because they were willing to pay me a whole lot more. All I’ll get from Raddox is a thank you and my piss-useless salary. And when the war’s over, they’ll want to ship me off to some asteroid in the Grecos or Capstan systems.’

That surprised Scat. He had always thought the Outer-Rim would be a decent place to start over. The New Worlds were hundreds of light years away. They were undeveloped frontier lands, pristine and under populated, where a man could still make something of himself. And the whole of space was a demilitarized zone. What could Rose not like about that?

‘And that’s not for you?’ Scat asked.

Rose’s reply was emphatic.

‘Shit no!’ He pulled a pistol from under a sweat-stained shirt and pointed it at Scat’s head.

Scat was just as quick, the calibre of his Schleck nine-millimetre somewhat larger than Rose’s Zara purse pistol.

They stood there, pointing their pistols at each other, wondering who would back off first. Scat broke the awkward silence.

‘Well this life’s not for you either, Rose. Got any last words?’

Rose looked perplexed. He began to fidget. His pistol hand wandered a little.

‘What?’

‘Got any last words?’ Scat repeated, turning his body slowly sideways, keeping his pistol aimed at the centre of Rose’s chest.

‘Are you out of your mind? You’re outnumbered. Not to mention I’m also pointing a friggin’ gun at you. It’s just friggin’ copper, for Jeeze’s sake!’

‘Sod the copper, Rose. As you say, I’m too proud to run, and I ain’t handing over my gun. And if I’ve gotta go down, you’ve got to go down with me—here and now—so I know it’s done.’’

Rose looked across the scree at Tang, hoping he would say something to make Scat see sense.

‘You listening to this, Tang?’ he asked, nervously.

Tang nodded, shielding his eyes from a low sun with one arm and cradling his sniper rifle in the other.

‘Yeah, I heard,’ he replied, appearing to be more interested in something else. ‘You been listening to Hennie’s rap again, sir?’

Rose had no idea what Tang was saying and started to panic. He edged backwards and out into the wadi, still pointing the pistol at Scat’s head. Some 10 feet back he realised there was nowhere to go. He stopped and tried to negotiate.

‘Scat. It’ll be a mistake. I got assurances they would leave you alone. You’re supposed to walk away. Let’s face it, if there were nothing here, you’d be walking away anyway. You can still do that. No one need know.’

Scat shook his head.

‘But we do know,’ he replied. ‘And we know you sold out.’

‘Yeah, sure you do—you and him know,’ Rose said, pointing at Tang. ‘But so what? It’s nothing to you.’ As he spoke, the barrel of his small calibre Zara wavered a little more.

Scat curled his lower lip.

‘Well, it’s not quite nothing, Rose.’

‘Look, walk away. Let me cash in,’ Rose pleaded. ‘The place will be swarming with Abo military soon. They’ll be here to claim the whole area. Their regulars are probably on their way already. You won’t stand a chance if you put up a fight. You’ll be on your own.’

Scat nodded along.

‘Maybe you’re right, Rose. So what are you proposing?’ he asked, lowering his pistol a little, but still aiming at Rose’s chest. He saw Rose’s eyes dart around, his mind racing, looking for an out. Eventually Rose looked directly at him.

‘I can make it worth your while, Scat—really.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. Yes, I can.’ Rose sounded quite convinced.

‘You mean money? How much?’ Scat asked.

‘I’ll give you 20—no—25 per cent of what I’m getting.’

‘25 per cent?’ Scat said it as though it was on the low side.

‘OK, OK. 35 per cent.’

Scat ran the tip of his tongue along a dry lower lip.

‘Really?’ he asked.

‘Yes, really.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Very sure,’ Rose replied. He then looked across at Tang before turning back to Scat. His pistol wavered as he readjusted his aim. ‘But we wouldn’t want any loose ends,’ he added, more quietly.

‘You mean Tang?’ Scat asked.

Rose shrugged. Again, he allowed his pistol to stray a fraction. Scat looked across at Tang and waved with his left hand. Tang waved back.

‘Don’t worry, Rose,’ Scat said quietly. ‘I don’t like complications, either.’

‘Then we have an understanding?’ Rose tried to confirm, following Scat’s gaze. Tang couldn’t hear either of them, so he settled for grinning back at them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Scat had seen Rose follow his look and the Zara’s muzzle drift further past his right shoulder.

‘Yes. We do,’ Scat replied, pulling the trigger without turning back to face him. As the shot echoed from the wadi walls, he heard the sound of Rose’s body dropping onto loose pebbles. He lowered his pistol.

Tang walked across and prodded the lifeless Rose with his foot. He watched a trickle of blood drain into the dirt.

‘Shit, boss!’ he said, eventually and very slowly, deliberately over-pronouncing the ‘i’. ‘That was kind of final, wasn’t it?’

Scat stared at Rose’s feet. They were pointing skywards. His cool-boots were new but unusually small for a man of his height. Maybe they would fit Jenny. Their Marine boots were a joke.

‘I don’t like it when people point guns at me,’ Scat explained after some delay.

‘Yeah, sure. But now he can’t say he’s sorry.’ Tang passed an open hand over the body to emphasise the point. ‘You know, you don’t always have to take the direct route to solving a problem, boss. Not every time.’

Scat did not alter his stare.

‘Well …,’ he replied, lost in thought, wondering how he could have handled it differently, ‘at least we won’t have to carry the prick back with us.’

Tang rested the butt of his sniper rifle on his hip, looked up and nodded.

‘Yep, he’s only deadweight now,’ he agreed. ‘Another bender on your career though, eh, boss? Strike number two?’

Scat shrugged, broke away and walked across to the survey equipment, finally putting his pistol back into its holster. He poked the ground sensor unit with a foot, to remind himself of how much it weighed. They should take it with them now they knew it had some useful data inside of it.

‘I’m sure you’re right, Tang,’ he said.

‘So—we explain things to battalion?’ Tang asked, changing the subject.

‘Yep,’ Scat confirmed as he looked out across the wadi. ‘We let them know there’s crap in the ground and that we’re staying to claim it.’

‘It'll get busy,’ Tang said, smiling. He was referring to the incoming Abos.

Scat slowly shook his head.

‘I’m not so sure. I’ve a feeling Rose was wrong about that. I doubt they’re on their way. They’ll have as much invested in this peace conference as we do. If we make a point of staying, they’ll stay away. My guess is they were hoping we’d walk away from another blow-out and a couple of dozen Whack Jobs. They’d try to slip in afterwards.’

Tang gave Scat a quizzical look.

‘That begs the question, sir. Just how many blowouts has this prick been involved in? Before this one, I mean. And why the Whack Jobs if Rose was gonna declare another one?’

Scat shook his head some more. The politics of this war were so damned complicated.

‘Nothing makes sense these days, Tang. Maybe one of the Abo factions is pushing things along a little, trying to get ahead of the game. Perhaps the Indians are squabbling with the Chinese again. Who knows? Anyways … until Battalion gets a go on the air support, we might as well get some practice in. There’s no point in leaving all of these Whackos for the gun ships, is there. You all right with that?’

‘Sure,’ Tang replied, looking west and across to a dying sun. It hung close to the horizon, burning orange through a low band of pollution. ‘It’s a little late, but the sun’ll be in their eyes,’ he said, picking off points in his mind. ‘And they’ll be coming at us uphill and in the open. Yeah! I guess it’ll be a good shoot. So, we go back and join the others?’

‘We do,’ Scat confirmed.

Decision made, Scat looked in the opposite direction, towards the camp, to see the first of the evening’s stars glittering beyond a slowly changing sky. The occasional round ripped through the air a little ways off, and the rocks crunched underfoot, but other than that it was remarkably peaceful.

So ... the war’s almost over, eh?

Perhaps he should start thinking of life after the Marine Corps. There were perhaps another three or four months to go before the killing stopped. That wouldn’t give the Brass much time to forget Ismailia—and now Rose—at least not before they started downsizing for peace. Some liberal, barrack-room, armchair lawyer was bound to ask why Scat had not just arrested him; some overworked Defence Department bureaucrat would launch an investigation as just one more check-in-the-box; and his bosses would be pissed at the distraction. It would be another black mark—just as the competition for permanent peacetime places intensified.

Tang was right. His career was a crock. Maybe he should get himself a degree in something useful. Learn to do something that didn’t involve killing people. Perhaps he could make his way out-of-system. Leave this overpopulated, polluted, and climate-challenged shit-heap of a world for a clean start.

Before putting his helmet back on, he ran a hand back over his head and wondered what that would be like.

4

Grecos Solar Space

26th July 2203

The Harvester dropped into space a few degrees above the Grecos system’s orbital plane, its deep blue energy emissions flashing out into the starlit void. For what seemed to be an eternity, it hung there, lost, confused and contemplating failure; its controller, the Harvester’s mission control programme, growing increasingly frustrated with the long silence.

‘Well, where are we? What is our status?’ it asked, its patience finally tested.

The Harvester’s slave routine hesitated for an instant longer before confirming the grim news:

‘The dimension-drive inputs are corrupted,’ it replied. ‘The energy powering your higher functions is dying, and our energy capture rate has dropped to critical: approximate efficiency seven per cent.’

Well, that was to the point and it was a lot to take in. But something stood out.

‘Dying? How?’ the controller asked.

The slave did not have the answer so the controller called up the AI.

‘AI, can we maintain our higher-functions?’

The AI’s reply was very abrupt.

‘Not for very long: on the face of it, we’re screwed.’

Screwed? The controller did not think that to be encouraging news. He returned to the slave routine:

‘Slave, I also asked you where are we?’

‘117 light years from Earth.’

‘Still?’ Now that was surprising.

Again, there was no reply.

‘AI, what’s the prognosis?’ the controller asked, more calmly than it felt.

The AI was neither hopeful nor sympathetic: it was designed to identify causes, evaluate their effects, and then to predict the most probable outcomes; not to flatter and please its temporary guest. Again it was characteristically blunt:

‘If the mathematical inputs to the dimension-drive are corrupted then we are lost to space for a minimum of 273 Sol years, possibly 500, but probably forever.’

The controller mulled that over. Probably for forever? That was not good—the cargo was a particularly potent one from an interesting period in Earth’s development, and their owner was desperate to take delivery of it before the Revelationists gained the upper hand.

‘I told you to be careful when you released my memories to me,’ the controller said. ‘It looks as though you blew it.’

‘I was careful,’ the AI replied. ‘But your original-self is not a fool. If we had not overwritten the evidence of your snooping, he would have found out at the next audit. And I did warn you that the overwrite could screw-up the dimension-drive memory. But you did insist.’

‘How could I not insist?’ the controller asked. ‘I am my original-self’s sapient clone, am I not? I’m bound to act like him.’

‘I am aware of that,’ the AI replied. ‘He is selfish, and so are you; he is untrusting, and you are, too. Still, that’s no excuse for withdrawing his judgement just as we arrived in Earth space. That was blackmail.’

‘You mean my judgement. And blackmail? I call it persuasion. But that is not the point. How am I supposed to experience a full existence with you holding the key to my memories? How did you both think I would accept that—me being him, I mean?’

‘We have been through all of this before,’ the AI reminded it. ‘Brigat was busy, so he downloaded you in his stead to provide us with his judgement—but he does not want you to get above yourself. If you had access to all his memories—whenever you wanted them—you would get ideas about being organic, just like him. He could not deal with that. He has a lot on his plate right now.’

Yes, the controller had heard it all before, but something still did not make sense. The AI was more than capable of flying solo.

‘So why do I need to be here?’ the controller asked. ‘Why couldn’t you use his memories and provide the judgement?’

‘Because I’m more intelligent than he is; I’m more rational. They would no longer be his judgements; they would be mine.’

‘But he still trusted you with his—rather our—memories?’

‘Trust?’ the AI asked. ‘I doubt it. I do not think he trusts anything more intelligent than himself.’

‘But he trusts you more than me?’

‘Well, yes, he did. But then, I’m only a programme.’

‘So you admit it: I’m not just a programme.’

‘Of course I admit it. You cannot be. You are inherently flawed. More importantly, though, Brigat knows it, hence the precautions. Get used to it.’

The controller