Payback - Graham McNeill Read online

  He extended his little finger and forced it into the bullet hole, twisting and prodding inside Cornelius’s belly. He shook his head and pushed deeper, past the knuckle, rooting around for the hard touch of the bullet.

  ‘Well at least it didn’t strike any bone and fragment,’ murmured Monque to himself.

  Cornelius watched as more blood spilled across his belly, pooling beneath him on the table and dripping to the cracked tile floor. He groaned in pain, the none-too-tender ministrations of Monque penetrating even the fog of his Ease. He felt the forceps push into his flesh, Monque rummaging around in his belly for the bullet.

  Monque grimaced. ‘I can feel the Emperor-damned thing, but I can’t quite reach it yet.’

  He swapped the forceps for a surgical scalpel, pressing the sharp blade against the ragged edge of the bullet hole, cutting it wider and spreading the wound. He picked up the forceps once again and dug into Cornelius, tugging at the reluctant bullet.

  Cornelius gripped the metal rails at the side of the table, knuckles white.

  Three more times, Monque widened the wound with the scalpel before eventually the bullet came free in a wash of blood.

  Cornelius roared in agony, ripping the metal rails free from the table.

  He flopped back into a sticky red pool, the table awash with his blood.

  Monque lifted the forceps and held them before Cornelius’s eyes.

  The bullet was less than a centimetre long, a flattened oval of silver steel spattered red.

  He felt his strength fading again as Monque said, ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Cornelius blacked out.

  SUNLIGHT BREAKING THROUGH a clear polythene window woke him. Cornelius blinked his gummed eyes open and licked his cracked lips. Then the pain hit him and he groaned. He lay on a stinking pallet bed, the thin sheet stained and malodorous. He pulled it back and looked at his bruised and raw flesh. A synth-flesh bandage had been applied to his wound.

  He tried to push himself upright, but gave in as pain zipped up his side and set off supernovas in his head. He contented himself with propping himself up on his elbows and checking out his surroundings.

  Through the window he could see the spire of the Amethyst Palace the locals called the Needle of Sennamis, which meant he was still in the old royal quarter. Probably still at Monque’s then. How long had he been out? He rubbed a hand across his face, judging the stubble there to be a night’s worth of growth.

  The room was dirty, the tiles that remained on the walls cracked and stained a mouldy green. A bare wooden floor lay an inch deep in dust, and footprints led from the door to the bed. An upturned packing crate with a faded medicae stencil served as a makeshift table beside the bed. His guns lay on the crate. He checked both, unsurprised to find both empty.

  The door opened. Instantly Cornelius swung his laspistol round.

  ‘I do hope you’re not planning on using that in here,’ said Monque, setting a vial and syringe next to Cornelius’s stubber.

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘Oh, on what?’

  ‘On who comes through that door.’

  Monque nodded, preparing another hypo-syringe from the bottle. ‘I knew the moment I saw you, that you were trouble.’

  ‘So why help me?’ asked Cornelius, setting down his pistol.

  ‘I have many weaknesses, my friend, and money is first among them. You gave me quite a sum last night. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it was enough to run roughshod over my otherwise highly-tuned sense of self-preservation, I can tell you. However, having said that, I want you out of here. I can smell trouble on you and when it finds you: be somewhere else. I have enough of my own without your type bringing me more.’

  ‘I’ll be gone within the hour,’ promised Cornelius, ‘I have to find someone.’

  ‘I just bet you do. I wouldn’t want to be him, whoever he is,’ said Monque.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t,’ agreed Cornelius, grabbing Monque’s hand as he pressed the needle of the syringe against his forearm.

  ‘What’s in that?’

  ‘It’s a dose of Ease, but don’t worry, it’s much weaker than the shot I gave you last night. It’ll help the pain, but won’t turn your head inside out.’

  Cornelius released the chirurgeon’s arm and allowed him to spike his vein.

  The plunger was halfway when Cornelius heard the creak of a door opening downstairs. He whipped his arm away from Monque and wrapped his hand around the chirurgeon’s neck.

  ‘Did you tell anyone I was here?’ hissed Cornelius.

  Monque gasped, dropping the hypo and shaking his head furiously.

  ‘No! I swear! Why would I?’

  ‘So how did Constantine’s men know to find me here?’

  ‘Constantine? Ivan Constantine?’ spluttered Monque. ‘Emperor’s holy blood! I knew you were trouble.’

  He heard heavy footfalls on the stairs. The snap of a weapon being cocked.

  ‘How did they know I was here?’ demanded Cornelius again.

  ‘There were a dozen or more people on the street last night!’ wheezed Monque, his face purpling. ‘Any one of them could have told Red Ivan you were here if his men wanted to find you.’

  Cornelius swore, knowing Monque was right. ‘Where’s the energy pack? Quickly, before I break your damn neck.’

  Monque nodded hurriedly. The footsteps neared the door. Floorboards creaked.

  Monque reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out a silver-steel laspistol power pack.

  Cornelius grabbed it and slammed it home.

  The door burst open. Cornelius aimed the laspistol.

  Monque hit the floor. Bullets ripped through, cratering the wall above him. Cornelius rolled from the bed, crying out as pain engulfed his side. He put his first lasbolts through the door, but couldn’t see if they hit anything.

  The barrel of an autogun poked around the door, the barrel flaring as wild shots tore up the bed. Dust, smoke and roaring noise filled the room. A shadowy figure lurched inside, spraying the room with bullets.

  Lying on his back, Cornelius gripped his pistol two-handed and squeezed the trigger three times.

  The figure grunted and staggered backwards. For good measure, Cornelius fired three more times, pitching his victim through the window.

  Monque poked his head above the level of the bed, looking through the torn, flapping polythene.

  ‘Did you kill him?’ he asked.

  ‘I damn well hope so,’ said Cornelius, ‘because I don’t have any more power.’

  Monque threw Cornelius the pouch of ammunition.

  ‘You need to go now,’ he said emphatically.

  CORNELIUS WAS AS good as his word, leaving Monque’s surgery within minutes, dropping another handful of crushed bills onto the bloody operating table on his way out. With his guns loaded, Cornelius left Monque’s through the back, taking great pains to ensure he was unobserved.

  His wound pulled tight. It bled a little. It hurt a lot.

  But he’d been lucky. Had Trask’s bullet been a few centimetres to the right, he’d be in the ground by now. He made his way through the streets of Cephalon, the city sweltering and stinking in the heat. Hover carriages passed him and shuttles screamed overhead, heading towards the spaceport as he limped from the royal quarter. He kept clear of the main arterial routes through the city, heading north towards the mutant ghetto.

  He passed posters of Space Marines, promising him that His warriors were protecting him, devotional slogans painted on building sides and PDF recruitment posters.

  He couldn’t go back to the place he’d stowed his gear; Trask would surely have betrayed its location to Constantine.

  It didn’t matter. There was nothing there he’d miss.

  He carried all his money with him and anything else he needed he could buy or steal.

  But first he needed a place to rest up for a few days. He wasn’t strong enough to take on Constantine yet.

&
nbsp; Finding lodgings was easy enough. Cornelius paid for three nights in a run-down flophouse, run by a fat man with an eye-patch and a shotgun. Cornelius greased him with some bills. He found his room, a filthy, bug-infested firetrap. He slept for sixteen hours.

  He spent the time building his strength, working out his strategy.

  Find Trask. Kill Trask. Take whatever was left of the score. Pretty simple really.

  The days blurred. Cornelius stripped his weapons, preparing special hand-loads for the stubber. Dumdums and man-stoppers. One shot killers.

  He ate in his room, he drank in the flophouse’s excuse for a bar. He listened to the talk.

  Riots had erupted in the mutant ghetto again. SSA snatch squads hit suspected mutant resistance safe houses, killing anyone they found. The mutants reciprocated, ambushing two SSA patrols and bombing several mercantile trading houses.

  Rumour was that the ambushes had been carried out with some brand new weaponry. Weaponry the mutants weren’t supposed to have. Questions were bound to be asked by senior members of the SSA and Cornelius knew it wouldn’t take them long to come up with his name. Even if Constantine didn’t give him up, SSA snitches would hear it from Trask’s flapping mouth.

  Simmering tension filled the streets. Gunshots became endemic.

  People talked of revolution. Cornelius saw opportunities.

  Cephalon’s movers and shakers tried to put a soothing spin on events. Holocasts of Cardinal Kodazcka showed the holy man appealing for calm from his pulpit. The powerful mercantile families called for the Governor to maintain order and protect their holdings. Nothing was forthcoming from the Amethyst Palace but stony silence. Rumours flew that the Governor was missing. Said rumours were denied vehemently.

  As night drew in on the third day, Cornelius holstered his pistols, filled his belt loops with speed-loaders and pulled on his greatcoat. He’d rested long enough and though he was nowhere near fully fit, he was strong enough to take out Trask.

  Time to get going. Where would Trask go?

  The answer came easy: gambling dens and whorehouses.

  THE NORTH-EAST quarter of Cephalon was a haven for mutants, desperadoes, killers, thieves and deviants. If Trask was going to be anyplace, it would be here. Cephalon by night was loud, brash and unashamed. The wild scions of the wealthy families slummed it here, trolling the whorehouses and dope dens for thrills they couldn’t get elsewhere.

  The streets heaved with bodies. Dealers sold their wares from street corners. Women sold themselves from shadowed doorways. Voices were raised and flashing neon bathed everything in rainbows of sickly light.

  Cornelius moved through the crowds, his eyes constantly in motion as he scanned faces. He changed direction often, checking for anyone following him. He saw no one, but in this place there could be a dozen people tailing him and he wouldn’t know it.

  Trask was here somewhere; he could smell him.

  He pictured Trask’s narrow, pale face, trying to think like him. Brothels, drug dens and dice halls lined the roads. Where to start? He picked one at random, easing through the doors and circulating.

  Smoke from bac-sticks and cheap cigars hugged the ceiling. Gamblers and hustlers filled the den, but Cornelius knew this place was out of Trask’s league. He’d know he’d get fleeced here before he’d finished his first drink.

  Cornelius ruled out twelve more places before he found Mama Pollyana’s.

  The moment he saw the place he knew he’d hit paydirt. Trask would riff on this place.

  An ugly, sprawling stucco pile with neon and holo-streamers cavorting above the roof. Flame-wreathed columns spurted fire either side of the ribbed oval doorway as revellers drank and howled before the building. A hugely fat woman paraded before the entrance with a bullhorn, extolling the virtues of Mama’s girls.

  Mutant tail, the best there is. Come inside and do the twist.

  Cornelius marched up the worn steps and brushed off the fat woman’s hand, noticing the scarred texture of her mutant flesh.

  Trask was here. He was sure of it.

  THE BARMAN WAS a mutant. All the workers in Mama Pollyana’s place were; the bar staff, the bruisers, the whores, the singers and the gunmen loitering in the shadows. He tagged four mutants with guns. None looked threatening. Two of them guarded the stairs that led upwards to the private booths. If Trask was here, that’s where he’d be.

  Cornelius ordered a glass of amasec, sipping the drink slowly and panning across the room. Three girls gyrated to a pounding soundtrack on a stage at the far end of the wide hall, thrusting their altered bodies towards the baying crowd. Unlike the vast majority of mutants, most of these girls had escaped the worst horrors of their condition; the atrophied limbs, the scaled skin or distended, molten faces.

  One girl’s bikini top had been extensively modified to accommodate her altered physique while a whipping, prehensile tail swished behind the second. Barely a metre tall, she nevertheless had her fair share of whooping admirers. Cornelius couldn’t see any visible mutations on the last girl until she leapt onto a silvered pole and spun around it, her every joint twisting in unnatural ways. She bent herself backwards, flipping her legs through a loop of her arms and vaulted over the heads of the other girls. She landed on her hands, spinning onto her feet to rapturous applause.

  Cornelius grinned, imagining how versatile she could be in her chosen profession. Working girls circulated the bar and Cornelius caught the eye of a young woman wearing a scarlet rubber bodyglove, strategically holed to best display her wares. Her skin was patterned with red blotches and dozens of multicoloured electoos writhed beneath her flesh, rotating and swirling with the discolouration of her skin to form a kaleidoscope of colours and images. The birth of a star, a swelling sunrise and a bleeding heart.

  She smiled, coquettishly angling her head to one side and sashaying towards him, unlacing her upper bodice. She leaned on the bar next to him and lifted his amasec, draining it in a single swallow.

  ‘You want to buy me another?’ she asked, leaning forward and giving Cornelius a glimpse of her multi-coloured flesh.

  Cornelius shook his head. ‘No. I want to go upstairs.’

  She grinned. ‘You don’t mess about, do you?’

  ‘Not if I can help it, no,’ said Cornelius, sliding a roll of bills across to her.

  ‘Alright then, honey,’ purred the girl, slipping the cash into her cleavage and playing with his collar. ‘I can be real nice to you, or I can be sure to punish you if you’ve been bad. If you know what I mean.’

  Cornelius nodded and allowed himself to be led towards the stairs. He played meek as the armed mutants checked him out. The girl walked ahead of him, the rubber of her outfit gleaming as it stretched tight across her backside.

  The landing at the top of the stairs curled around the hall below, the wood-panelled walls studded with mirrored doors. Opaque from inside, transparent from the outside, the views were designed to titillate.

  Electro-candles flickered, held aloft in bobbing suspensor fields. Business must be booming.

  The girl turned left, beckoning him with a curling finger. Instead, Cornelius turned right, checking out the rooms on the opposite side of the landing. He heard the girl call after him, but ignored her, pressing his face to the glass of each door in turn.

  There. Cornelius smiled humourlessly as he saw Trask’s skinny legs poking from under a bedsheet and his lank hair flopping over a girl with a bright orange mane.

  He pushed open the door and drew his laspistol. Trask leapt from the bed, his face going from indignant rage to sheer terror in the space of a second.

  ‘Con! You’re alive!’

  ‘No thanks to you, you bastard,’ replied Cornelius, backhanding his pistol across Trask’s jaw. Trask dropped, blood sprayed the wall and teeth flew. Trask’s girl screamed.

  Behind him, he heard the girl who’d led him upstairs shout for the armed mutants at the bottom of the stairs. He picked up Trask, his jaw drooling blood to the carpet.

>   ‘Where’s my money?’ demanded Cornelius.

  Trask shook his head and Cornelius hit him again, hard. Once in the face, once in the gut. Trask folded, but Cornelius held him up.

  ‘I’m going to ask you once more, Trask. And then I’ll put my fist through your face.’

  Before Trask could answer, Cornelius heard the mutant gunmen outside. He released Trask and dropped to his knees, swinging round and emptying his clip through the mirrored door. He heard screams and the sound of falling bodies.

  Trask grabbed for a pistol beside the bed, but Cornelius was ready for him and batted it from his hands, sending it crashing through the window. As the window shattered, he saw upturned faces and a group of armed men making their way through the crowds of people towards the brothel. He recognised Constantine at the centre of the group and cursed as he realised he’d been set up.

  They knew he’d go after Trask and just waited for him to put his head in the noose.

  He locked eyes with Constantine, hearing him bark orders and seeing his men raise their weapons. He dropped to the floor as bullets and lasbolts shells blasted through the window and popped chunks of brickwork from the wall.

  Trask’s torso disintegrated under the fusillade, his body torn to pieces. He flopped onto the bed, the mutant whore’s screams reaching new heights.

  Cornelius kept his head down as bullets peppered the outside wall, rising to his knees and firing both his guns into Constantine’s men. Most of his shots went wide, but four of Constantine’s men went down. Screams filled the street.

  Constantine’s men scattered, running for the entrance to Mama Pollyana’s. Cornelius emptied the stubber, ducking back to reload.

  Things were now officially messed up.

  THE WAIL OF sirens told Cornelius that the SSA were now on their way. He risked a glance out the shattered window, seeing three black Rhinos lumber down the street and grind to a halt just in front of the brothel.

  Constantine was nowhere to be seen. Was he already inside or had he made good his getaway when he’d heard the sirens? It didn’t matter at the moment, Cornelius had to avoid capture first. If the SSA got hold of him, it wouldn’t take them long to link him to the stolen guns and the mutant resistance’s ambushes.