Further Conflicts Read online

  ***

  Boring says something, later on, when we’ve washed the Rec down with bleach, dumped the remains in the furnace, opened the rest of the bottles.

  He says the wake was Command’s idea. When he signalled them that we were bringing back a casualty, they advised him to watch it to see what happened.

  Like it wasn’t the first time. Like they were trying to establish a pattern. Like they were conducting an experiment to see what happened to the things that the Scaries killed. An experiment with us as lab rabbits. Middlemen, Middlemen, same as bloody usual. Fun, not to mention frolics.

  We were going to miss Mendozer. Of course we were. I’m just glad Boring decided not to. Emptied the rest of the clip making sure he didn’t. I’ll drink to that.

  I wish that extract would hurry up and get here.

  Follow this link for the author's notes

  Unaccounted

  Lauren Beukes

  The ittaca is wedged into the uneven corner of cell 81C, as if it is trying to osmose right through the walls and out of here. It is starting to dessiccate around the edges, the plump sulphur-coloured frills of its membrane turning shrivelled and grey. Maybe it’s over, Staff Sergeant Chip Holloway thinks, looking in through the organic lattice of the viewing grate. The thought clenches in his gut.

  He has been having problems with his gut lately. He blames it on the relentless crackle of the blister bombs topside. The impact reverberates through the building, even here, three floors down. You’d think, eventually, you would get used to such things.

  The Co-operative Intelligence Resource Manual does not cover this exact situation. The CIRM advises a recovery period for the delegate, a show of mutual respect to re-establish trust and better yet to instil gratitude. But the CIRM also advises that if a delegate is critical, it is critical to press on.

  Terminal is not an ideal result. Terminal can be attributed to lack of due diligence.

  The corridor stinks of urine. Not from the ittaca, which is anaerobic and recycles its waste through its body again and again, reabsorbing nutrients. Strip-mining food. It excretes sharp chlorine farts that puff from the arrangement of spongy tubes like organ pipes fanning down its dorsal side. Just one of the chemical weapons to watch out for in the ittaca’s natural biological armament according to The Xenowarfare Handbook: Reaching Out To Viable Lifeforms.

  There is a splatter of piss on the door. He will need to have a word with K Squadron. He knows they’re just frustrated. That camaraderie sometimes takes itself out in casual acts of hooliganism. And still. The Co-Operative Intelligence Resource Manual does not cover what to do when respect for your authority is fraying like the ripped membrane frills of an ittaca’s gastropod foot.

  When they took occupation of the prison, there were ittaca med-scanners installed in all the cells and bacterial-powered screens mounted outside, monitoring vital signs: heart-rate, brain activity, adrenal spikes in the endocrine system that might indicate a prisoner about to erupt into violence. The first thing the military did was dismantle them.

  ***

  Security risk, command said. He never saw a formal directive. Good for morale, General Labuschagne said, when he queried it. C’mon Holloway. Was he honestly saying his people didn’t deserve a little celebration? After everything they’d been through? It still made him feel uneasy. A waste of resources, he told himself.

  They’d torn the screens off the walls, whooping and hollering, then piled up the ittacan tech in the open courtyard under the shadow of the guard tower – back when it was still standing – and set it alight.

  He turned a mostly blind-eye to the mulch moonshine being not-so-covertly distributed between the reserves because maybe the general had a point. A special occasion. But he circled the groups, making sure no one drank too much of the mildly psychotropic guano distillate and made a note to find out who was brewing it. He’d have to have a word with them.

  It all went wrong, of course. The light from the bonfire or maybe the music seemed to enrage the insurgents, drawing down a fresh assault by the blisters. Chip was the last one through the doors. Dragging Reserve Lieutenant Woyzeck with him, reeling drunk, despite his best efforts, and swearing at him to let her go. Asshat. Shithead. Partypooper.

  His eyebrows were seared off by the heat of a strike, even as the explosion scoured the reinforced coralcrete with venomous pus and shrapnel. Fucking Kazis, he heard, as someone slammed the door. He’d tried to discourage them from using the term as disrespectful to both the ittaca and those reserves of Japanese heritage. But the blisters are aerial suicide bombers and what are you going to do?

  Fucking lucky, Chip, Ensign Tatum said, leaving out the ‘sergeant’, leaving out the ‘sir’ because Holloway encouraged his people to call him by his first name. And was that grudging admiration in Tatum’s voice?

  Chip found an unexploded blister in the courtyard once, deflated on one side and gagging on its own blood from the shrapnel tearing up its insides. Blisters swallow improvised weaponry whole, choking down nails and sharpened scrap metal and bits of coral through their gill slits, like an athlete carbo-loading before a game. Some of the reserves were using the blister as a football. He chased them off with a warning. But he couldn’t bring himself to shoot it.

  He can’t blame them. There isn’t exactly much in the way of recreational facilities for the reserves. Mainly they take pot-shots at the rats. Which are not rats, but something like them. Bald skittering things the size of Rottweilers with too many legs. They dig up body parts from shallow graves from the former regime and drag them around, scraping off the dried membrane with nubs like teeth, cracking the mantle spines to get to the marrow.

  Let it not be said that the ittaca did not cast the first stone. Let it not be said that this was ever a good place to be.

  Inside the cell, a spasm flutters through the ittaca’s membrane, setting the spines along its mantle clattering. A xylophone made from insect’s legs. Alive then.

  The ittaca doesn’t bleed exactly. It extrudes a clear viscous liquid. Tacky, like sap. The first time, it took him 48 minutes and a full bottle of military issue stainEZ (guaranteed to take care of even the most stubborn bio-matter tarnish with just one drop!) to get the stickiness out of his greens. The third time he wore an improvised poncho made out of a foil body bag. He wasn’t prepared for a second time.

  He made a note of it in his weekly report. 1x body bag. He is careful to account for almost everything.

  407 Military Reserve Soldiers (human) stationed at Strandford Military Base formerly known as Nyoka Prison Satellite Facility. (Temporary posting). Broken down as follows: 241 Male. 113 Female. 53 NGS (non-gender-spec).

  0 Indigenous translators. (Complement of 7 were dismissed on charges of info leaks.)

  123 ittaca delegates (alive) kept separate in 123 cells.

  4 ittaca delegates (deceased) in morgue-lab.

  18 blister delegates (deceased) in morgue-lab.

  6037 blister delegates (deceased) processed through central crematorium

  550 TK-R surface-to-surface RPGs. Effective coralcrete penetration: 0.2%.

  25 MGL-900s, HE grenades. Effective coralcrete penetration: 100%

  200 MXR-63 multifunction assault rifles plus parts + 80 000 x 45mm rounds

  50 000 x 30mm U-238 rounds, incendiary, armour-piercing + 5 x chainfed autocannons + mountings. Shelved. Useless. Who would have predicted that ittaca would be able to metabolise uranium?

  263 268 carb-blasters (nutritional value as per military recommendations.) Sufficient for 213 days of rations for full staff complement. They have been here for 189 days already. This does not fit the military definition of “temporary posting”.

  700 re-breathers, including ample issue for visitors. And there are ample visitors. No rankings. No name tags. If it weren’t for the re-breathers taken off their hooks, set back to recharge, they might be ghosts.

  23 field decontamination tents. 12 carbon atmosphere recyclers; includes 3 overflow tanks
and 250 biohazard disposal bags. 2 tents unaccounted for.

  24 x 12-tray silver sulfadiazine 1% topical cream packs for treatment of chemical burns. 1 tray missing. He blames the ghosts.

  1050 field dressing packs plus standard meds.

  800 Standard saline packs plus first aid supply kits. All date-stamps have expired. Bandages are bandages. Aspirin is aspirin, General Labuschagne said when he raised his concerns.

  499 body bags aka meat sacks aka take me home daddy.

  He came here on the highest commendation. In the provinces, planet-side, he was a core cultural liaison with the ittaca in the villages. Strategically critical, they said. Hearts and minds. This was before everything went to shit. Sorry. Before relations devolved with the indigenous population and assertive action became necessary.

  He learned the basics of the language with its clicks and liquid gurgles using a translator pod. But it turned out a lot of it is in the nuance of how you arrange your mantle spines. He was popular with the young potentials, who would trail behind him on his rounds, popping and clicking, anthropological in their interest. He still feels a flicker of shame that he ever thought of them as grubs.

  They detonated the central guard tower in the courtyard. Too much of a target, command said. It didn’t make a difference. The blisters kept launching themselves off the balconies of the apartment mounds surrounding the prison on a single propeller wing, spinning downwards like maple seeds, making that godawful crackling screaming sound through their gills. Isn’t static supposed to bethe sound of the Big Bang?

  Before the siege intensified, before they’d been forced to retreat three floors underground, he used to walk the ramparts, taking in the view of the coralcrete apartments growing up in unsteady spirals, following chemical markers laid by ittaca architects. Even their slums are beautiful, he’d commented once to the sentry at the door. He’d been met with a blank stare.

  The reserves found the ittacan architecture disorienting. The warren of grown tunnels intersecting at strange angles. They ended up sleeping in the cells. Six to a room. Not exactly army protocol. Not exactly good for discipline. Soldiers cliqued up. They did things behind closed doors, regulation t-shirts stuffed into the viewing grates. Unauthorised sex. And other things.

  What’s the big deal. Chill out. We’re just blowing off steam. Probably Tatum and the others didn’t say any of these things. Probably they just stared at him and grinned those chimpanzee grins, all bared teeth and clenched jaws and contempt.

  He included this in his report. He is careful to be accountable. He is careful to use neutral language. He is careful not to use the word maggots.

  Members of Squadron K (night duty) reprimanded for inappropriate behaviour towards ittaca prisoners in cell block three. Video evidence, taken by the relevant members involved, is attached.

  He deletes that last part. Retypes it. Deletes it again. Leaves it at videos were taken. Does not attach them. He is aware that this is a security risk. He is aware that he isn’t qualified to know what is inappropriate anymore. Let’s war.

  He scrubs the videos. But he cannot shake the images. Or the sound of Tatum’s voice – the laughing that accompanied it – as he rounded the corner, on his way to dish out rations.

  Maggots. Fucking maggots. Suck on this. Fuck you. Fuck.

  There are items that he cannot account for. Things that were not on the facility inventory lists when he took over command of the prison, but have mysteriously appeared. Bayonet tasers. Electrodes. High-density carbon-saws for butchering meat. A pillow case twisted around a broken chunk of coralcrete.

  There are visitors. Irregular. Like ghosts. Did he already mention this? He’s pretty sure they’re MI. But they could just as easily be private contractors. Military development partners with an interest in developing new resources.

  The reserves call them suits, but it’s more the attitude than their attire. They wear sleek, expensive body-fitting hazmats. They don’t carry identification or rank. They refuse to answer when he questions them. Should his people be wearing protective gear too? Is this okayed by command? Why hasn’t he received notification? Where is their clearance? Can he see some identification?

  Don’t ask, don’t tell, one of the suits says to him, smiling behind her rebreather like it is all one big joke. Then she takes him into the ittaca’s cell. This was two days after his report. Which received no response. Officially.

  You need to understand, is what the suit said. But what he thinks is: complicit.

  It was just a lark, Chip, Ensign Tatum said, surly at being called into the cell that doubles as his office down here.

  What Chip Holloway does to the ittaca in cell 81C with the suit is not.

  Not the first or the second or the third time.

  He wishes the ittaca would fucking die already. He wishes the blisters would break through three floors and the whole damn moon and blow them all to smithereens. But mainly he wishes he could sleep and sleep and sleep. The exhaustion nags in his bones like arthritis.

  You ready? the suit says, appearing at his elbow. She flips open the viewing window. Looks like we don’t have much time. Better stoke up the crematorium, baby. Oh. I brought you something. She reaches into the side of her toolkit and shoves a folded piece of plastic tarp at him. Surgical scrubs. Better than a rejigged body bag, she says.

  She slides her chem-print keychain into the lock. The door grates open. In the corner the ittaca stirs, its spines clattering feebly. It resembles a clot of mustard. (A lump of custard. A pile of pus-turd he hears Ensign Tatum’s voice sing-song in his head.)

  Don’t worry, she says, seeing his face – which has started to become something grey and sagging that he doesn’t recognise in the mirror. Like he is starting to desiccate too.

  She kneels down and snaps open her toolkit. Starts sorting through various unaccounted items, humming a tune he recognises from the radio, sweet and catchy. Don’t worry. she repeats, her back to him, laying out things with serrated edges and conducting pads and blunt wrenching teeth. You can’t dehumanise something that isn’t human.

  Follow this link for the author's notes

  The New Ships

  Gareth L Powell

  London Paddington: The first thing Ann Szkatula did after stepping off the train from Heathrow was cross to the left luggage lockers and retrieve the gun stashed there by her new employers. It was a compact Smith and Wesson made of stainless steel and lightweight polymer, and it came with two additional clips of ammunition. She knew she didn’t have much time, so she slipped the weapon into her pocket and closed the locker door.

  Fresh off the plane from Switzerland, she still wore the thick army surplus coat and heavy boots she’d pulled on that morning. She sniffed the air. It was good to be back in London. The concourse of Paddington station smelled of diesel fumes and idling cabs; pigeons flapped under the glazed, wrought-iron roof. She started walking. Despite the boots, her feet felt springy, ready for anything.

  The last eight weeks had been spent at a clinic near Zurich, where the staff had cleaned and toned her body while she drowsed in an artificial coma. Now Ann felt rested, and fitter than she had in years.

  She passed a newsstand and it pinged her Lens, overlaying her vision with the day’s top stories: the Chinese test firing their new orbital defence platform; a global upsurge in the production of nuclear weapons; the authorities in Prague reopening the city’s subterranean fallout shelters. Irritated, she cut the feed with a twitch of her cheek.

  Out on the street it was night, somewhere around ten o’clock, and raining. The streetlights washed everything orange.

  The house she wanted stood halfway along one of the small roads behind Westbourne Terrace, a few minutes’ walk away. When she reached it, Ann saw it was a four-storey terraced Georgian building divided into flats. It had dirty white stonework and chipped iron railings. Without pausing, she splashed up its wet front steps. There was an intercom system by the door. She pressed the buzzer for the top flat, ho
lding it down for several seconds.

  The line crackled.

  “Hello?”

  She glanced up and down the street.

  “It’s me.”

  The door buzzed and she pushed it open. Inside, the hall carpet smelled damp. She crossed to the peeling wooden stairs, and clumped her way up four flights. At the top she came to another door. This was the attic flat. As she approached, the door opened a crack and a face peered cautiously around the frame.

  “Annabelle?”

  It was the voice from the intercom, and it belonged to a nervous-looking guy in his late twenties, with round glasses and a wiry hipster beard.

  “Hello Max.”

  Max was a cousin on her mother’s side. They hadn’t seen each other in years. He stood back to let her across the threshold.

  Inside, the flat consisted of a single room, with a bed beneath the window, a kitchen area against the opposite wall, and a bathroom door at the far end. The low, sloping ceiling made the place feel smaller than it really was.

  Max hovered by the kitchen.

  “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Ann ran a hand across her dripping hair, pushing it back from her forehead.

  “We haven’t got a lot of time.”

  The room smelled of mould and unwashed sheets. It was lit by a solitary bulb hanging from a bare wire. The window ran with condensation. Apart from the bed, there was nowhere to sit.

  Max opened the fridge.

  “If you want a coffee it’ll have to be black I’m afraid. I’m out of milk.”

  Ann watched him fill a plastic kettle from the cold water tap. His hands were shaking. He wore an unbuttoned plaid shirt over a white t-shirt, frayed jeans, and a pair of scuffed work boots.