Bedlam (5 page)

‘Never heard of it. Too bad there isn’t one that makes useless sewage pipes like yourself think they’re fucking soldiers.
Anyway, Kamnor you say? How is the effete bastard? Still swanning around like his arse wouldn’t rust?’

‘He was, er, looking grand when I left him, sir.’

‘I’ll bet he was. All image and politics with that one. Do anything to avoid losing face.’

Ross tried to retain eye contact with Gortoss in case anything less was considered insubordinate, but his focus kept being
drawn to the twitching and possibly not-quite-dead marine still pinned to the ground by his spike. He wasn’t paying maximum
attention to the sergeant’s words either, his focus latching immediately on to Gortoss’s dismissal of the virus. He’d never
heard of it, he said. What if Kamnor was lying, or mistaken, Ross wondered, glimpsing a host of new possibilities.

Then Ross once again glimpsed what Gortoss was almost absently doing with his lethal appendage and reasoned that, given he
was the most dangerously insane individual he’d ever met, perhaps he shouldn’t place too much stock in his testimony.

Gortoss glanced away, over the rim of the next crater, where something had pleasingly taken his eye. He barked a greeting
to a Sergeant Zorlak and requested that he stand fast a moment. When he looked back at Ross, he was wearing a grin so steeped
in malicious intent, it made Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
look like Barney the dinosaur.

‘Recruit, we’ve got just the job for you. Get your carcass over here.’

Ross proceeded down the first crater and towards the next with the light step and gaiety of a death row inmate who’d just
had his head shaved. He didn’t know what this ‘job’ entailed, but he suspected that if offered the choice, sight unseen, between
whatever it was and cleaning John McCririck’s toilet with his tongue, he’d take the latter without even asking for a peek
over that next rim.

‘Get a bloody move on. These bastards aren’t going to kill
themselves
, you know.’

Oh no
.

It was as horrible as he’d suspected. Zorlak and several members of his unit, Dagger squad, were standing over two prisoners.
The marines were on their knees, hands restrained behind their backs by orange-glowing devices, their heads bowed in resignation
and fear. Why were these guys being held, he wondered, when everybody else was just being slaughtered on the spot?

‘Got another thumb-sucking toddler just swapped his rattle for a blaster,’ Gortoss told his counterpart. ‘I want to see if
he’s worth a shit, because if he’s not made of the right stuff, I can’t afford any baggage out here.’

‘Be my guest,’ Zorlak replied.

Gortoss beckoned Ross towards them.

‘Execute this pair,’ he commanded, the deranged glint in his eye registering his anticipation of Ross’s difficulty but not
betraying whether he would be happier to see him succeed or fail.

One of the prisoners looked up in desperation.

‘Please, no,’ he said.

Gortoss bent over him and spat in his face, some hideous yellow discharge that smelled like diesel and raw sewage.

‘You expect mercy?’ he asked, feigning outrage. ‘You come to our world, bearing weapons of war, intent on putting a yoke around
our necks, and you expect mercy? Did you not think there would be consequences to your unprovoked aggression?’

‘To be fair, it wasn’t exactly unprovoked,’ suggested Zorlak reflectively. ‘We did enslave one of their colonies.’

‘We did?’

‘And we did transport about quarter of a million of them here, then butchered them and recycled their body parts as organic
replacements. Oh, and there was that business with the sub-space energy mining device that was tapping all the power from
their sun. How did you miss all this?’

Gortoss shrugged. ‘I was in jail. You tend not to pay much attention to off-planet affairs when you’re not scheduled to go
further than a half-mile radius for the next two decades. Still, doesn’t change my point, does it?’

He turned again to the prisoner who had spoken, lifting his chin to make him look up.

‘You expect mercy? From the people who racked up that little list of achievements? Blood of the fathers: I wish I had your
optimism, mate. Recruit, in your own time.’

Ross heard a choked, suppressed whimper, and saw the other prisoner look over at him. It was the kid he’d already had in his
sights and then let go. He was minus the helmet now, but that just made his face all the more recognisable. If anything, he
looked even younger, and definitely more scared.

Kobayashi Maru, Ross thought. It was a test he could only fail, a test in which he didn’t recognise what could constitute
success. Execute unarmed prisoners or refuse and be killed himself, before or after which the same prisoners would be executed
anyway. Cold logic therefore suggested he carry out the order, but if cold logic was what defined his actions, then what did
that make him?

Whether he had envisaged this or not, Kamnor had been right all along: if he killed these enemies, he would indeed become
someone other than the man defined by his memories. Perhaps indeed this was the trigger that would bring back his true self.

He could die as Ross Baker or he could live on as Christ knows what. The choice was just that stark, unless you counted a
third option of trying to take down Gortoss, Zorlak and both their units with a glorified hair-drier.

‘Come on, you sadistic bastard,’ Gortoss said with a chuckle. ‘It’s cruel to draw it out like—’

The sergeant didn’t finish his remarks on account of his brains deciding they wanted nothing more to do with him. This was
following a bit of gentle persuasion by an armour-piercing ultra-high-velocity projectile that suggested they might prefer
to spread themselves around the landscape than remain cooped up inside that cramped skull of his.

Zorlak turned to look for the source, by which time another of his unit had suffered a similarly critical reduction in the
number of heads.

Ross dived for cover and heard shouts of panic as the two squads scrambled to return fire. He didn’t quite catch what they
were saying, but it sounded like ‘card collector’, which couldn’t be right, as it conjured up images of an acne-ridden pubescent
dork staring in the window at Forbidden Planet. Their startled, fearful tones indicated something more likely to be seen
in
the window at Forbidden Planet, a suggestion backed up by the sudden outbreak of ballistics and body parts in the area.

From his position of relative shelter behind a huge section of mangled landing gear, Ross watched this ‘card collector’ take
on the combined might of Rapier and Dagger squads. He was human: another marine, Ross deduced, going on shape and proportion
as the man’s head was covered beneath a helmet and visor. He looked more armoured than the others, and somehow more distinct
too. The rest of the marines were dressed almost identically, but this card collector subtly stood out, even though Ross couldn’t
quite pinpoint why.

He moved faster than the others, or maybe it was just that he moved more deliberately and with greater purpose. He also had
a far more powerful weapon to wield, but that wasn’t what was making the difference in the fight. He’d have done fine with
one
of their standard machine-guns, and would probably have edged it even with Ross’s blaster.

The reason for this was that the home team were having a shocker.

For an advanced civilisation, their martial prowess and tactical awareness were embarrassing. Faced with somebody who wasn’t
wandering around in a post-crash daze, they were hopeless. They made no use of the ample cover options, just went straight
for their target, blundering obligingly into his line of fire. They exhibited no coordination or even any evidence of attempting
to work together, and they were bafflingly unaggressive in their returns of fire. When the card collector was in their sights,
they’d loosen off the odd burst, then stop, as though waiting for someone to verify whether he was dead, and clearly they
expected that someone to do it by post.

How could they have tapped energy from the Earth’s sun and successfully invaded a colony planet when they were utterly fucking
shite at this?

To his astonishment, Ross found himself confidently of the opinion that he could do better himself.

It was a theory he would imminently be given the opportunity to test under consistent conditions, as the card collector had
wiped out everybody else and was now heading his way, scanning for his next target. Ross must have broken cover at just the
wrong moment, as the marine got a fix on his movement immediately and pointed at him with an outstretched finger. Ross was
grateful that it wasn’t a rifle, as a squeeze of the trigger would have been the end, but he couldn’t help interpreting the
gesture as a declaration that he was being singled out for something particularly nasty due to being the only one left to
toy with.

Ross ducked down and scrambled along the side of the crater, where he lost his footing on the loose gritty surface. He skidded,
tumbled and rolled to the bottom, landing on top of a felled member of Dagger squad. This one hadn’t even got as far as unslinging
his rifle before being taken down, although going by the level of combat training on display, perhaps he’d been off sick the
day they learned about raising it in a straight line, aiming it at somebody you disapproved of and squeezing the little stubby
bit at the near end.

Ross picked up the rifle and slung the strap over his shoulder. It was heavy but he found the weight reassuring. Long, dark
and jagged, it was glowing in places, and he could feel it hum.

‘
That’s
what I’m talking about.’

He circled around, checking his six then stepping back in a low crouch, presenting the smallest possible target until he could
reach the partial cover of a thigh-high crate that had crashed down intact. He made it there just as the card collector appeared
at the rim.

Clagnuts. He was pinned down at the foot of a crater. The big marine knew exactly where he was and had him covered from an
elevated angle of fire. Ross could stay down behind the crate, but he’d be fatally exposed if he attempted to scale the sides.
And if the collector had any grenades, he was humped.

He raised his head as much as he dared, desperate to confirm the marine’s position. If his opponent moved down beyond the
rim, he could pop up again anywhere. The collector hadn’t moved, though. He was standing at the edge of the crater, just watching,
and the second he was sure Ross was looking back, he gave him the finger. Not some subtle gesture from the hip, but a full,
arm-raised salute.

Oh, he was loving this, the alpha male bell-end. He was relishing the hunt, trying to make it personal.

Ross ducked down again, beginning to feel the way a mouse must when Kitty starts playing with it, savouring the anticipation
of the kill. ‘I’m on your side,’ he wanted to say, but he wasn’t even sure it was true.

After a few more excruciating seconds of tension, he stole another glance. The collector hadn’t moved. He was still staring
down, and this time when he saw Ross staring back, he began performing exaggerated pelvic thrusts.

Did the cheeky bastard not know he had a proper gun, Ross asked himself; one he’d fire with a bit more conviction than his
predecessors?

Evidently not, was the answer, as the card collector now stood with both arms apart: Fuck you, I’m an anteater.

Ross hefted the rifle and fired.

‘Fuck you, I’m an android.’

The energy blast hit the card collector square in the chest,
resulting in a storm of electrical flashes around his trunk as he reeled back sharply.

Power armour.

Ross fired another three salvos in quick succession. The first two hit their mark before the collector took evasive action.
He ducked down out of sight, only to reappear shortly after, pointing at Ross then once again giving him the finger. He seemed
furious, indicated by the fact that the whole time he was jumping up and down on the spot. It didn’t make him much harder
to hit, though. Ross kept the trigger down longer on this burst, at the end of which there were no electrical flashes. The
power armour was depleted.

This belatedly provoked a response, the collector finally firing his weapon again. Ross heard the projectiles thump into the
crate, embedding with singing metallic reverberations, but, to his huge relief, none of them passed right through. Just one
of those things would be enough to cut him in half, he knew.

He could hear another sound too, one familiar from watching the collector take down the others: cartridge empty. His opponent
needed to reload.

He looked up and saw that the collector had evidently grown accustomed to the obligingly sporadic firing patterns of the locals,
as he was changing mag in plain sight. Ross levelled his rifle once more, to which the collector rather idiosyncratically
responded by raising his hand in a wave. His response to then being caught in a mercilessly sustained volley of laser fire
was more conventional.

He was obliterated.

Then, before Ross could even decide how he felt about this, so was the entire world.

It was as though someone had suddenly switched off the strong nuclear force. Everything dissolved in a shimmering instant,
all matter turning to a swirl of light in a hundred million colours. Ross recalled Zorlak’s confession about sub-space technology,
and wondered, in what he believed to be his final thought, whether Earth had deployed some such hideous device as a retaliatory
zero option following their failed invasion.

He felt himself come apart, yet even in feeling it and in seeing this dissolution of everything, he was aware he was still
conscious.

The colours coalesced, became white. All he could see was white, nothing else.

Uh-oh. World ended, reality dissolved, but still conscious and everything white. This could be awkward.

He spent a very uncomfortable few moments trying to remember his prepared position for explaining to God that he had nonetheless
been right not to believe in Him on the basis of all available evidence, and that his empiricism and advocacy of sceptical
enquiry was vindicated because faith-based belief had proven hugely detrimental to humankind’s welfare. At the same time,
another part of his brain was busy thinking: ‘Please don’t let the Catholics be right, please don’t let the Catholics be right.’
Who wanted an eternity in Pope Benedict’s idea of heaven? In fact, wasn’t the concept of paradise technically incompatible
with a belief system that disapproved of just about all known forms of pleasure?

To his relief he gradually distinguished that the white filling his entire field of vision was not formless, but had lines
within it, and even texture. He realised he was staring at tiles.

He was back in the scanner cell, lying flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He felt an overwhelming mixture of confusion
and relief. It
had
been a dream after all, but how? It had been so vivid, so consistent, and he had tried to wake up from it. Was it some kind
of trip Solderburn had cooked up, using the scanner to project
into
his mind rather than record from it?

Then he once again registered the absence of rails and scanning heads immediately above him.

Ross shot upright in a flash and examined himself.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ he sighed. ‘How can I still be a cyborg?’

He stood up and, as before, the door automatically withdrew and slid laterally open to reveal the same corridor. He must have
been teleported back here: that’s what the dissolving sensation was. Wow. First a real laser rifle and now he’d experienced
teleportation. Here’s to you, Mr Scott, he thought, but it prompted a question: who beamed him back here? And while we’re
at it, why? Had he proven himself somehow in taking down the card collector? Or had he inadvertently activated an integral
teleportation device himself, like he had inadvertently skewered poor Kamnor through the face?

One thing was for sure: getting his hands dirty in combat hadn’t triggered any shift in his sense of identity. He still felt
one hundred per cent Ross Baker, the same person who had gone to work this morning and learned his girlfriend was pregnant
before lying down to test Solderburn’s new scanner. If this was a virus, then he’d caught a mother of a dose.

Carol. Just the thought of her name made something in him ache, in a way that echoed how he’d felt in the days just after
he’d met her but before he first asked her out. She had invaded his mind, subjected him to a curious mix of tantalising pleasure
at the thought of her, impatient longing to be in her orbit and desolate insecurity in case he was destined never to get clearance
beyond the friend zone. He recalled that night at the bowling alley, a group of about a dozen of them commandeering two lanes.
It was Tracy’s birthday, and he had been invited along as he was new to the firm and the girls were trying to make him feel
welcome. They’d gone for a bite to eat first at some Mexican chain restaurant, and he’d ended up sitting opposite Carol. It
wasn’t some love-at-first-sight deal, perhaps because nobody
looks particularly alluring trying to eat a chimichanga that’s falling apart in their hands. But then something just altered
as he watched her bowl, like a switch being flipped.

He had felt in a trance after that, later having no recollection of how the bowling had gone, and mildly panic-stricken that
it might have been noticeable to everybody else that he turned into a besotted catatonic mute.

He couldn’t afford to think about her now. He could feel his connection to her more acutely than ever, but it only served
to emphasise the gaping distance that now lay between them, in every sense.

He proceeded once again through the same corridors, his sense of familiarity confused this time by definitely having been
here before a couple of hours earlier. The artillery cannon kept up its arrhythmic tattoo, preceded always by that tell-tale
inrush and followed by the smaller bangs that he now knew were the sounds of spacecraft disintegrating. His progress was a
little less tentative than before, emboldened by his martial exploits, until he caught himself striding confidently towards
the elevator platform and realised he no longer had a gun.

Arse candles. Where had it gone? Perhaps the teleportation system didn’t let you carry anything through, but he couldn’t see
how that would work, given the amount of foreign objects that were embedded in his person.

He rose into the staging area once again, in time to see another unit muster themselves and ship out. Their leader glanced
his way momentarily as they headed for the diagonally sliding doorway. He looked like Zorlak, but that was impossible, as
Zorlak was lying out on the battlefield in a state of irretrievable disassembly. Plus, it wasn’t prejudiced to say that, to
the unaccustomed eye, one mechanised zombie cobbled together from alloy plates and harvested body parts looks rather like
another.

A glance was all the notice he got. Nobody hailed the conquering hero, but neither did anybody ask what he was doing or what
had happened to his unit. He wanted answers, though. He needed to find out more about this virus, for a start. Kamnor
and the troop of soldiers who’d followed him had been coming from the other side of the complex, through that link corridor.
It had been demolished by the fuselage, but there was probably a way through the wreckage.

He made his way across the staging area towards the same exit as before, bracing himself for the carnage and possible flames
ahead. The sliding doors parted for him, revealing the same initial stretch of passageway, surprisingly unscathed by the impact.
The angle of the bend not only hid what was ahead, but must have prevented debris from scattering this far. Once again he
could see the play of light on the grey concrete of the opposite wall as he approached. From this position it was easy to
imagine that the crash had never happened.

Once he had reached the bend, the picture changed, and not in the way he was expecting. From this position, it was even easier
to imagine that the crash had never happened, as there was absolutely no evidence that it had. The corridor was corpse-and
debris-free, the walls were still where the architect had envisaged them and the burning-fuselage count was down one on before.

Ross stood gaping in bewilderment, then turned to look out of the huge window again, making sure he hadn’t confused himself
concerning the layout and exited the staging area down a different corridor. Nope: he could see the unnecessarily phallic
artillery cannon gobbing its death-spunk at the invasion force from exactly the same position. He stared up at the sky, focusing
on individual craft and trying to remember whether he had seen them destroyed before, but none of them was memorably distinct.

‘It’s an awe-inspiring sight, isn’t it?’ said a soft, clipped and rather posh voice from behind him.

It was only momentary paralysis brought on by shock that prevented Ross from jumping in the air and letting loose a most uncyborg-like
shriek of fright.

‘Lieutenant Kamnor,’ he eventually stumbled.

‘In the flesh,’ Kamnor replied, for it was unquestionably he. ‘Well, what there is of it.’

Ross stared at him, transfixed. It was only the ongoing shock and confusion that stayed an impulse to hug the guy in sheer
relief that he hadn’t killed him after all.

But he
had
killed him. He had quite unmistakably inflicted stomach-churningly horrific injuries of a nature seldom remedied by a couple
of Paracetamol and a quiet lie-down.

There was only one explanation. It defied all that was known about physics and the very fabric of reality, but it was considerably
more probable than a ton of debris spontaneously re-assembling itself in blatant violation of entropy.

He hadn’t been teleported: he had gone back in time.

‘Shouldn’t you be with—’

‘My unit, yes, lieutenant, sir,’ Ross interrupted, grasping the advantage he’d been inexplicably dealt. ‘Rapier squad. Mopping-up
duty. It’s just that I suspect I have been hit by the Gaians’ virus. Sergeant Gortoss sent me back for tests and to find out
whatever I can about the condition, lieutenant, sir.’

‘Well, that was uncharacteristically understanding of him.’

‘I believe he described me as “a useless arse-rag of a liability” and suggested I “go and get my brains cleaned out or he
would suck them out for me and shit in my head as a replacement”.’

‘Yes, that sounds more like Gortoss,’ Kamnor admitted.

‘I gather other victims have reported it wearing off in combat, but I suspect I’ve got a more resistant strain. Sergeant Gortoss
expressed concern that a subsequent symptom of the variant might be an impulse to attack our own forces. He didn’t put it
in precisely those words, but—’

‘Quite. No, this requires further investigation, certainly. You should report to med bay. In fact, I’ll come with you. If
the enemy have uploaded a more powerful version of this virus, then we need to identify it immediately.’

Kamnor began leading him down the corridor towards the double doors, through which a familiar troop of soldiers was now advancing.
Ross felt the inrushing power surge, heard the cannon boom. From somewhere in the sky, there then followed a high keening
sound.

‘INCOMING!’ Ross shouted, pulling Kamnor towards him with one hand and gesticulating manically to the troop. The soldiers
scrambled back behind the threshold of the blast doors just a moment before the corridor got its extreme makeover.

Ross couldn’t see beyond the fuselage, flames, smoke and heat haze, but he could hear voices calling out, enquiring whether
the lieutenant was all right. Ross had intervened in time. He had saved them.

Result! He had saved several grimly visaged zombie death-troopers serving an army that by its own admission had slaughtered
a quarter of a million humans for spare parts. Yay, he thought. Go me!

Just as last time, he and Kamnor had ended up in a tangle on the floor after the impact, but this time the lieutenant was
alive to help him to his alloy-clad feet, which Ross regarded briefly as he climbed upright. He wasn’t going to find a pair
of astro-turf trainers to fit him for five-a-sides ever again, but on the plus side, he wouldn’t have to worry about any more
verrucas or fungal infections, and he wouldn’t be needing shin pads.

‘Bloody good show, soldier,’ Kamnor said. ‘That virus certainly isn’t hindering your powers of observation or your reflexes.
You saved my life; I salute you.’

And he did, sending out his arm, fist clenched at the end.

Ross eyed it anxiously.

‘Sir, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t reciprocate. The virus interferes with certain actions and behaviours.’

‘That’s unfortunate, but as it appears to have given you a sixth sense, I shan’t complain.’

A sixth sense, Ross thought, briefly considering another explanation, albeit one that didn’t so much challenge the laws of
science as completely give them the finger. What if he hadn’t travelled in time, but instead experienced a
Final Destination
-style premonition?

Well, were that to be the case, the outlook wasn’t good for any of them. They were in the middle of a war-zone. If Death needed
to balance the books, He should be thoroughly embarrassed if it took Him more than three minutes.

Four of the troops Ross had saved made their way to Kamnor, passing briefly outside to get around the wreckage. The other
two had retrieved fire-extinguishing equipment from somewhere close by and were spraying some kind of gel on the debris, instantly
containing the flames.

Kamnor seemed to lose focus for a moment, staring blankly like his face was lagging.

‘Incoming communication,’ he reported. ‘There are reports of
a landing force having made it through. They are attempting an incursion of the south perimeter. Cutlass squad, I need you
to come with me.’

‘Yes sir,’ they responded.

Kamnor turned to Ross.

‘You’ll have to find your own way to med lab. Best of luck with sorting that virus.’

‘Thank you sir,’ he replied, resisting the impulse to offer a warning about staying away from kitchen implements and heavy
machinery just in case the
Final Destination
theory was correct.

If it was, then Death must have noted Ross’s thoughts on an acceptable time-frame, as Kamnor didn’t make it five yards before
being killed. His metal body was sliced into several pieces as though it was no tougher than a melon, julienned by a form
of ultra-high-velocity projectile weapon with which Ross had become recently familiar.

Because of their respective positions, he didn’t have line of sight on where the shots had come from, but he knew it was the
card collector who had sniped Kamnor from somewhere out in the wastes.

He decided he ought to have a word.

Ross was about to venture out in pursuit of the assassin but was halted by two obstacles. The first was the timely realisation
that, unlike during their last duel, on this occasion he was completely unarmed. The second was more literal: he couldn’t
get through the gap in the wall anyway, because it had become rapidly choked with body parts previously belonging to members
of Cutlass squad. They had gone charging out in immediate response to the attack, exhibiting the same battle prowess and tactical
awareness of their comrades in Rapier and Dagger squads by proceeding into a narrow bottleneck and being picked off one by
one, each apparently heedless of the fate that had just befallen the man in front of him.