Automatic Assassin

  Chapter 27

  The Magnificent Dragon Katana moved away from the fleet and creaked round to night-side, giving the command to the others to await further orders.

  Inside the great dragon, a quarantine command went out. Only fifty soldiers were kept on duty, keeping an eye on the zombie infection. Everyone else went back to their barracks, which locked tightly.

  Xolo lounged at the command console. He had every password he needed to run this ship, courtesy of his own research, the pieces of Woo over which he had custody and a bit of an assist from Meseret.

  He spun his chair to see the fleet of the Gukkools. It was a grey smudge. Then came fire.

  In space combat, the first few seconds make a big difference. The Gukkool fleet were standing with their pants down, not even being able to block the lock-ons of Meseret.

  In synchrony, lasers, bombs, phasers and missiles flashed down from the Meseret fleet. The smaller Gukkool ships enjoyed the ambiguous luxury of instantaneous death. The bigger ships buckled and burned, but held together long enough to shoot off some revenge. That was their luxury.

  A couple of those big antler ships got scorched and a couple of dozen Meseret guys paid the ultimate price. But that was about it.

  Gukkool’s navy was obliterated. Silent fires of various colors merged and made a white light that made even Mother Earth blink and blanch for a second.

  It was all recorded and logged and verification was sent back to the central council. This was a good clean kill. Warnings had been issued, documentation had been gathered. Their having kidnapped king’s daughter was the icing on the cake that made everything very, very tidy. Following the rules felt almost as good as killing all those Gukkool sons of bitches.

  …

  News reached Belaarix quite soon. The mood on the Sultan’s yacht was…posthumous. As they looked out at the magnificent endless blue flatness, and shuffled around the yacht looking for poison they enjoyed the stillness that comes from having no future. The endless juggling of possibilities, weighing of risks and merits, scheming: this consumes a lot of the brain’s potential.

  So as Chang and Boyle lined up two deckchairs facing each other, then cleaned off their revolvers, then hugged briefly, then sat in the chairs and then locked targets on each others foreheads, then started counting down from ten it was only the bulbous tumor of past mistakes that dragged down their human spirits.

  Then as the count got to ‘three’ even the past detached and they were in a pure moment of present. They looked at the face they were about to pulverize and love and hate merged and then they pulled the triggers.

  Below decks, Dr Quirg was long dead. The moment she heard the news and knew that it was her mistake that had precipitated this dégringolade, she immediately tore open her lab coat and stabbed herself in the chest. The sultan did come in just in time to stomp on her last seconds of awareness with his enormous boots.

  Magrega and Dubloon had one last illicit screw. Then they made calls to other sultans to request transfers. But no other son of the Grand Old Haja wanted anything to do with this mess. ‘Containment’ was on everyone’s mind. They couldn’t give Boa Morte Sr. and Meseret any room to come in and take down the whole clan.

  “I wonder what the enquiry will say about how Meseret got the alert to come to Earth?” pondered Magrega, looking at her spouting wrists.

  Dubloon fell off the bed.

  “Xolo. This Xolo is…the perfect alibi…for this…bloodbath.”

  In the future, people die the same way they did in the past.

  But in cases like this their backup personalities - sitting in servers waiting for eternal life to finally get discovered - are thoroughly, thoroughly deleted.

  And the trash is emptied.

  …

  Haja Gukkool lay on the deck, his binocularrow planted in the red soil of his eyes.