The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (64 page)

Boring, he points with his chin and directs Surge to park Mendozer in the middle of the Rec. The Surge does so, and heels the brake-lock on the gurney’s wheelbase. Boring walks over to a side table, indicates by a narrowing of his eyes that Klubs should instantly remove the hand of clock patience spread out on it, and then dumps the carton. It clinks. Glass.

“We’re holding a wake,” he announces.

He opens the carton. It had been a stores pack for cans of rice pudding in a previous life. His big hands scoop out sets of chunky shot glasses, a digit in each, five at a time. Cripes only knows where he managed to scare up real-glass glasses.

Then came the best bit. Twenty-four bottles of the good stuff. Litre bottles, actual glass. Boring twists the top off the first one, and I can’t remember how long it’s been since I heard the fresh metal collar of a screw cap strip open like that.

He starts filling the glasses. Generous measures. It takes more than one bottle. We’re all wary. Juke Boring has a history of playing cruel tricks in the name of character building experience. The stuff he was pouring might just have been cold tea. We’re all braced for a metaphorical smack round the ear and a lecture on taking things at face value.

But this isn’t a trick. You can’t fake the smell of fifteen-year-old malt.

“Where’d you get this stuff?” asks Neats, the platoon sergeant.

“Station commander owed me a million favours,” Boring says. “Now he owes me a million minus one.”

He picks up a glass. He doesn’t hand the others out, but there’s a wordless instruction for us all to go help ourselves. We take a glass each, and form a loose circle around the gurney. Twenty-eight men: twenty-four, plus Boring, Neats, the Surge and Mendozer in his box.

Boring raises his glass. “Here’s to Mendozer,” he says. “Middleman from start to finish. Skull it.”

“Skull!” we all say, and chug back our glasses. We clonk the empties down on the lid of Mendozer’s box, and Boring nods to Neats to refill them.

As Neats gets busy, Moke asks the question we’re all thinking. “We don’t usually do this,” he says. “Why are we doing this?”

“Because we should,” says Boring. “Shows respect. Isn’t usually enough time, or there’s no place to do it. Thought it was a custom we should get into.”

The glasses are full again. We hoist them.

“Middlemen, best of the best,” says Neats.

“Skull!” we say. Refill.

I was told the platoon’s nickname is the Middlemen because we get right in the middle of things. Klubs says it’s because we’re always stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere – in this particular instance, with a dead bloke in a box in a pressurized bunker that smells like bad wind.

The concept of the wake is unfamiliar to some of our number, so Fewry explains.

“It’s a mourning custom,” he says. “A watch kept over the departed.”

“Why?” someone asks.

“In case they’re not dead,” says Klubs. “In case they wake up.”

“That’s not right,” says the Surge, who’s the most educated of the Middlemen fraternity.

“It isn’t?” asks Klubs. “I thought that’s why it was called that.”

The Surge shakes his head. “That’s just a myth,” he says. “One of those old wives’ tales.”

“But I heard,” says Klubs, never one to let a thing go, “that they used to dig up old coffins and find fingernail scratches on the insides. ’Cause people didn’t have proper medic stuff back then, and sometimes they thought some poor sod was dead when they wasn’t, and they’d bury them and then they’d wake up looking at the lid. So they’d hold one of these things to keep an eye on the body for a while and make sure it wasn’t going to wake up before they bunged it in the ground.”

“I understand,” says the Surge. He has a patient tone sometimes. “I understand what you mean. It’s just the word comes from a different root.”

“Oh,” says Klubs.

We neck a few more (“Death to all Scaries!”, “Mother Earth!”, “Second Infantry, defenders of the World!”), and in between we remember a few stories about Mendozer. You could count on him. He was an OK shot with the Steiner, but really gifted with the grenade gun. He didn’t snore much. He had a couple of decent jokes. There was that one really funny time with the girl from stores and the ping-pong bat.

The mood relaxes a bit. Each of us takes a moment to individually tilt a glass to the box sitting there on the chrome gurney, and say a last few words of a personal nature. A few of us sit back. The cards come out. Moke and some others dig out the sticks and the ashtray puck, and start playing corridor hockey on the pitch marked out on the tiled hallway leading through to medical. There’s a lot of shouting and body-slamming into doors. Boring watches them, almost amused. The pitch outlines are wearing away. It’s been there as long as any of us can remember. No one knows who painted them.

The Surge pulls out a second deck, and starts to do some of his famous card tricks. Nimble fingers. Fewry goes off to get some bacon strips, crackers and pickles from stores.

Every now and then, someone hoists up his glass and calls out a toast, and everyone stops what they’re doing, even the hockey players, and answers.

Usually, it’s a simple “Mendozer!” and we all answer “Skull!”

If I’m honest, I’m not sure how long we were kicking back before someone noticed. Couple of hours, minimum. I know that Neats told me to go get another bottle out of the carton for top-ups, and I saw we’d skulled half of them already. The party had broken down a bit, and spread out through the rooms around the Rec.

Moke suddenly says, “What’s he doing there? That’s not respectful.”

No one pays Moke that much attention, but I look up. Mendozer’s box is no longer in the centre of the Rec. It’s been wheeled aside, and it’s standing under the big blast ports, three or four metres away from where the Surge parked it.

No mystery. I mean, it’s obvious as soon as you look at it. The gurney’s spring loaded brake-lock has pinged off and it’s rolled. Maybe someone brushed against it.

Except they haven’t, and it hasn’t. The brake-lock hasn’t disengaged to such an extent; in fact, Moke is actually having trouble unfastening it so he can roll the gurney back into the middle of the room where it’s supposed to be.

I go over. Bend down. Help him. The Surge heeled that brake good. The pin needs oil. It takes a moment of effort and a few choice words to unfix it.

Moke and me, we go to roll the box back into pride of place.

“Wait,” I says. He can feel it too. He looks at me. It’s a bad look. I immediately wish I’d sat out the last couple of toasts, because the drink has got me paranoid. Maybe I’m being clumsy. Maybe I’m a little happy-handed and everything seems skewy.

The box feels too light. The gurney’s rolling far too freely. There’s no weight in it.

“’Sup?” says Boring. He’s right there at my shoulder all of a sudden. Around us, people are still playing cards and telling jokes. Out in the hall, the corridor hockey tournament is reaching its climax.

I look at him, say nothing. It’s in the eyes. Boring puts one hand flat on the top of Mendozer’s box and just moves it from side to side. He can feel it too. You can see it. The whole trolley fishtails slightly under the stir of his palm. Nothing like enough weight. It’d have to be empty to behave like that.

Boring looks at me, quick, then back at the casket. Someone’s left an empty glass standing on top, and it’s left a ring of condensation on the shiny plastic. Boring picks up the glass and hands it to Moke. Moke has got eyes big as saucers by now.

Boring runs a finger along the edge of the lid. There are catches, but they’re floppy plastic, nothing secure. He flicks them.

Then he opens the lid.

I don’t want to look, but I look. It’s not that I want to see Mendozer dead in a box, but I would find it reassuring at least.

We see the inside of the bottom of the box. Casket’s empty. No Mendozer, nothing.

Boring shuts the lid.

“This isn’t funny,” I whisper.

He points to his stony expression, a familiar gesture intended to emphasize the fact he isn’t cracking up.

“Did someone take the poor bastard out as a joke?” I asked. It seems unlikely.

“Maybe the Surge pulled the wrong box out of the fridge?” Moke suggests. His voice is as low as ours.

That seems unlikely too.

“Wouldn’t the Surge have noticed the box was light when he brought it through?” I ask.

Boring doesn’t answer me. He looks around the Rec, winks at Neats. Neats makes an excuse about needing a slash to gently extract himself from his card school. Boring looks back at me.

“Bosko,” he says. “Go fetch a Steiner. Meet me in medical.”

“OK,” I say.

“Take Moke with you.”

“OK.”

I don’t know what to think. I get that creepy cack-yourself feeling you normally only get when Scaries are around. My hands are shaking, no word of a lie. Moke looks how I feel. We slip out the back way, avoiding the hockey insanity in the hall, and head down the link tunnel to Dock Two.

The lights there are down to power conserve. Half of me wants all the alcohol in my system flushed out so I can clean my head-space. The other half wants another skull to steady me.

All our platoon kit and hardware is stacked up in Dock Two where the extract discharged it. Most of the carrier packs are heavy-duty mil grade, but some look disarmingly like Mendozer’s box. Just smaller. Like they were made for parts, not whole bodies.

Nice thought to dwell on.

Moke watches the door, twitching from foot to foot, while I locate one of the gun crates in the pile of kit. I slide it out, punch in the authority code, and crack the lid. Half a dozen platoon weapons are racked in the cradle inside. There’s a smell of gun oil. All Steiner GAW-Tens. I pull one, like Boring told me to. I pull one, and four clips.

The Steiner Groundtroop Assault Weapon Ten A.2 is our signature dish. Some platoons these days favour the Loman BR, and that’s a fine bit of business, but it’s big, and really long when it’s wearing a flash sleeve, and it’s not a great fit in a tight space where you might need to turn at short notice. The Middlemen have been using GAWs since bloody always, Eights back during the last war, then every model upgrade ever since through to the current Ten A.2s. The Ten is compact but chunky. It loads low friction drive band HV, in either AP or hollowpoint, and it’s got full selective options. I take hollowpoint out of the crate, not AP. We’re in a pressurized atmospheric environment. Penetration control is going to be an issue.

I’m clacking the first clip into the receiver as I rejoin Moke.

“Screw this bollocks,” he says to me. “This is a joke. This is someone’s idea of a bloody joke. When I find out who, I’m going to de-dick him.”

No argument from me.

“Unless it’s Boring,” he adds.

I nod. I let Moke hang on to that possibility, because it’s more comforting than the alternatives.

But I saw the look in Boring’s eyes.

This isn’t his prank.

Boring’s in medical with Neats. They’ve got the walk-in fridge open. It smells of ammonia and detergent wash. The light in the fridge is harsh and unflattering, sterile UV. Moke and I wander in. I wonder if it’s like a normal fridge and the light only comes on when the door’s open. I don’t volunteer to stay inside to find out. There’s no handle on the inside.

Boring and the Sergeant are sliding caskets off the rack and opening them. Just from the way the caskets move on the rollers, you can tell there’s nothing in them.

“Checking the Surge got the right one?” I ask.

Neats nods.

Boring slams the last box back into place with an angry whip of his wrist, and it bangs against its cavity. “Nothing,” he says.

Behind us, we can hear the whoops and crashes of the hockey still in play.

“Makes no sense,” says Neats.

“Somebody like to explain this?” a voice interrupts.

We turn. It’s the Surge. He looks pissed off that we’re trespassing on his domain.

Boring explains. He uses the fewest possible words. He explains how we thought the Surge had pulled the wrong box, and that we came in here to find the right one. He explains they’re all empty.

Now the Surge looks twice as pissed off. “That can’t be,” he says.

“Tell us about it,” says Moke.

The Surge pushes past us into the fridge. “No,” he says, “I don’t know what’s happened to Mendozer. That’s a thing in itself.”

“And?” asks Neats.

The Surge is checking the ends of the caskets for label slips. “Nine Platoon lost a guy in a cargo accident on their way through last week. They left him here.”

“What are you saying?” asks Boring.

“I’m saying Mendozer or no Mendozer, these shouldn’t all be empty.”

He locates the label he’s looking for and pulls the box out. There’s nothing in it, but it’s not clean inside. There’s like a residue, wet, like glue. There’s a smell too, when the lid opens. Decomp. You can smell it despite the extractor fans and the detergent.

“The bloke from Nine should be in this one,” says the Surge.

“What are you saying?” Moke asks. He’s starting to get that whine in his voice. “What are you saying, exactly? We’ve lost two stiffs now?”

“Someone’s taken a joke way too far,” says the Surge. “Cadavers don’t just get up and walk away.”

He looks at us. He sees the look we’re giving him. He realizes it was a really bad choice of words.

We go back out into medical. Boring sends Neats and Moke to round up everyone else and get them into the Rec. If this is a joke, he’s going to scare an admission out of the perpetrator.

The Surge touches my arm. I see what he’s pointing to. “Lieutenant?” I say.

Boring comes over. There are spots of wet on the floor.

“I mopped up in here,” says the Surge.

The spots dapple the tiles. They’re brown, not red, like gravy. There’s no indication of spray or arterial force. Something just dripped.

Boring heads towards the bio-store that joins medical. The door’s ajar. There are graft banks of vat tissue in here, flesh slabs, dermis sheets and organ spares kept in vitro jars. We can smell the wet as we approach the door. Wet and decomp, spoiled meat.