Part 16 (1/2)

She had his attention.

'Now,' she continued relentlessly, 'the way I reconstruct the situation is: somebody here was alerted by some unknown person on Earth that these two were on their way here, and the somebody here checked back with the s.p.a.ceport on Earth that they did indeed leave on the s.h.i.+p. As soon as the s.h.i.+p landed, they were arrested. Does that seem reasonable?'

'No crime there, surely?' he asked.

'Well, it all depends,' she said. 'Protocol would suggest that if you were aware of two criminals on board an Earth-registered tourist s.h.i.+p you should have notified the Adjudication service, rather than wait until they landed on 98Purgatory and arrest them yourself. It could be argued that your refusal to contact us makes you party to the crime they are suspected of committing.'

Beltempest thought for a moment. 'And if we were just about to fastline you that we had your suspects in detention, but hadn't actually got round to it?'

'Then we would be grateful.'

He nodded. 'Then we have them.'

'And we're grateful. Are they still alive?'

He checked his watch.

'I wouldn't put money on it,' he said.

Private Fazakerli watched the woman's face with feral, almost s.e.xual pleasure.

She was scared. Terrified. She wasn't showing it obviously, but he could see it in her eyes. She knew she was going to die, and he loved it.

The heat of the jungle was getting to Fazakerli. His head had started to ache, and there was something funny going on with his eyes. Everything he looked at was blurred and distorted. The fleshy leaves on the trees seemed to beckon him onwards suggestively, and the cold, blue glow of the acidic ice beyond the force wall was a purifying, purging energy, stripping him of concerns and worries. Ever since the under-sergeant died he had been paralysed with fear, but now he was fine. Now he felt like a deity.

His finger tightened on the trigger as he waited for Enquorian to give the order to fire. G.o.ddess, was the guy going to wait for ever? Fazakerli wanted to kill something. Anything!

'Wait,' the little man in the white suit said, stepping forward and waving his hands wildly in the air.

'Last requests?' Enquorian sneered. Fazakerli realized with disgust that Enquorian was scared. He didn't want to give the order. He wanted an excuse not to kill them.

The metal of the trigger was warm and silky against Fazakerli's skin. He could feel the sweat trickling down his spine. G.o.ddess, he was so turned on he thought he was going to explode.

The little man's hands flapped as he tried to think up some pathetic excuse, and Fazakerli knew with certainty that Enquorian was going to buy it, whatever it was. He felt his pulse thudding in his temples and neck. He wanted to kill. He had had to kill. to kill.

'You can't kill us because because . . . '

'Because we've been testing you, and the test's over now,' the woman said, stepping forward. Fazakerli remembered her from the Arachnae Arachnae; he'd been returning from leave and looking for some final action, and she'd turned him down in the bar. It hadn't bothered him that much at the time, but now . . .99.

He kept the sights of his blaster firmly fixed upon her loins. He was going to cut her in two whatever happened.

'Test?' Enquorian queried uncertainly.

'Of course.' Her confidence fazed Enquorian, and even the little man with her looked askance, but Fazakerli could hear the shake in her voice. She was terrified. He looked sideways at his comrades. Couldn't they hear it too?

Didn't they want to see her hot blood steaming in the suns.h.i.+ne as much as he did?

No, they were just as uncertain as Enquorian. With the under-sergeant dead, they hadn't got a clue what to do. Weaklings! Why couldn't they just surrender themselves to madness?

'You don't think we could have wiped out four of you so quickly if we were just simple targets, do you?' the woman continued.

'That's right,' the man agreed, 'we're a special, ah . . . '

'Special task force,' she said.

'Yes, a special task force sent to test your reflexes.' The man pulled himself up to his full height. 'And we're not impressed, are we Provost-Major Summerfield?'

'Indeed we aren't, Provost-Major, er, Provost-Major. Not very impressed at all.'

Whatever was happening to Fazakerli was getting worse. His pulse was hammering in his ears so furiously that he had to strain to make out what was being said, and his finger kept flexing against the trigger, taking up the slack and releasing it slowly, coming within a millimetre of releasing the pent-up energy of the weapon.

'P-P-Provost-Major . . . ?' Enquorian stammered. 'I . . . we . . . didn't realize . . . '

'No harm done,' the man said genially. 'Well, not to us at any rate. Least said, soonest mended. Just take us back to the s.p.a.ceport and put us on the first s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p out of here and we'll say no more about it, there's good chaps.'

Fazakerli looked around. The other guys Enquorian, Smitts, Fenian they were all buying it! He saw them through a red haze: blurred figures, moving in slow motion, relaxing and lowering their weapons. He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip their complacent heads from the necks and drink the spurting blood.

With a sense of vast relief, he gave in to the death-thirst.

Fazakerli raised his blaster and fired at the first target he saw. Enquorian's head exploded with a satisfying splat, spraying bone, brain and blood over everyone. The woman dived for cover as he turned the weapon on her, and all he managed to do was splash the energy harmlessly across the force wall.100.

Grunting in frustration, he tried to burn the little man, but he seemed to have vanished into the jungle.

A blaster beam seared across his shoulder. He whirled, catching Smitts across the legs. Smitts screamed shrilly and dropped his gun, the stumps of his legs spraying blood into the air. Fazakerli laughed. Brilliant! He couldn't ever remember enjoying himself so much!

A movement to one side attracted his attention. He tracked it with his weapon. It was Fellian, trying to crawl away. Fazakerli burned through his spine, and watched him thrash around in agony on the blood-splattered ground.

Oh yes! Oh yes yes!

The thudding in his head was the beat of some primal drum, calling for sacrifice. He wanted to dance, to laugh, to scream, to fall to his knees and praise some indefinable G.o.d of pain and degradation, but most of all he wanted to bathe in the sticky rich warmth of blood.

He had never felt so alive before.

A sound behind him. He turned. The woman was crouched beside the small man, who was trying to stem the flow of blood from what was left of Smitts's legs.

'Why?' she cried. ' Why Why?'

'Why not?' he giggled, and raised the blaster until she was staring down the muzzle. He didn't know whether to kill her straight away or rape her with the weapon and then kill her. Which one would be the most fun?

'There's something wrong with you,' she said. 'Look inside! Is this really what you want?'

He looked inside, and found nothing but a dark, capering figure with his face screaming, 'Kill, kill' at him.

'Yes,' he whispered. 'It's exactly what I want.'

And pulled the trigger.

Powerless Friendless stood in the shadows, opposite the building he lived in, and wondered. Did he dare go in? Something was looking for him. Something dangerous. The place was almost certainly being watched. Chances were, if he went in, the bot would be waiting for him. If it had survived the fall into the ca.n.a.l.

He went through the conversation with the bot again. It knew he was Powerless Friendless And Scattered Through s.p.a.ce, that much was certain, and it had killed Waiting For Justice by mistake, thinking Waiting For Justice was him.