Gavin Smith - Veteran

‘How many d’ya want?’

‘Two hundred.’ Robby stopped as he was reaching under the bar for the black-market cigarettes.

‘Yeah?’ he said, somewhat surprised. I nodded. He looked between the two of us.

‘You score big tonight?’ I almost started laughing hysterically at this but Robby brought out the cigarettes and named his price. I turned to Morag.

‘Pay him,’ I said. She looked like she was going to argue but pulled out some of the dirty notes and counted them off for Robby.

‘New meal ticket?’ Robby asked sceptically.

‘Like fuck,’ Morag muttered under her breath. I lit up another cigarette and resisted the urge to open the bottle of malt.

‘Is McShit in?’ I asked. I watched Robby’s expression harden. Others in the bar were beginning to take an interest as well and not just the Twists.

‘Now you know McShit’s always out,’ Robby said.

‘How much till he’s in?’ I asked. Robby looked at Morag again.

Tell me straight, boy, you in trouble?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘A lot?’ I nodded again. He watched me, seeming to size me up. ‘We’re closed!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Everyone out!’ There was surprisingly little argument as people shuffled out, the cubes shifting slightly on their cables due to the mass exodus. A few of the Twists remained, making no secret that they were packing.

Robby opened a small door in the bar and beckoned us through. We followed him past the steaming, huffing still. Robby guided us to the tubular steel central support for the rig. The hatch that had been cut into the steel had been very well concealed. Robby must have sent a signal from his neural ware because the hatch popped open for us. Behind it was a red-lit world of corroded tube steel. Robby reached over and grabbed a rusted rung welded into the old metal and began to climb down with a practised ease that belied his stunted appearance.

The tube world inhabited by the Twists was an open secret on the Rigs. Everyone knew about it – you could hear them from time to time inside the supports. Off the Rigs it was a true urban myth, a grotesque hidden fairy-tale kingdom made up of all the shit things people say about the Twists: cannibals, stealers of children, that sort of crap.

All the lighting was red safety lighting, which gave the place an eerie glow. The distant echoes of other people’s movements in the pipes further increased the eeriness, though many of the areas had cheap foam insulation to try and deaden noise. The Twists didn’t want to advertise their presence; this was their place. The other inhabitants of the Rigs pretty much left them to it as the Twists were useful and they had their own niche.

Robby led us down into the concrete block at the base of the rig. Originally ballast, it had been hollowed out with the same programmable concrete-eating microbes that they had used for the old Tay Road Bridge. More supports had been added externally, both driven deep into the riverbed and attached to the neighbouring rigs.

Piper Dawn was on the east end of the Rigs, close to where the Tay led out into the North Sea. On the east wall of this damp, submerged concrete block was a home-made airlock. Home-made was never a phrase I liked hearing in connection with things like airlocks. There were a few rigs between Piper Dawn and the North Sea but the Twists had gone out in diving gear with torches and remotes and cut a channel. Now this was all that was left of the Port of Dundee.

This was how you came and went if you didn’t have the influence and the means to use the motorways, the Mag-Lev, the sub-orbitals or own an aircar. McShit’s Port of Dundee was for those who needed to leave quietly. The Port had a few uncomfortable-looking chairs in it and bits and pieces of equipment I guessed were for regulating the atmosphere inside, some of it maybe sensor-based. There were a couple of monitors that showed external views of the polluted riverbed.

Various Twists were working on the machinery or just hanging around. Again there were guns on display, as well as less than subtle security systems. Throughout the hollowed-out concrete block ran steel bars. They weren’t supports but rather formed a kind of climbing frame that provided access to all areas of the Port. From part of this frame hung McShit.

McShit had been a chimera. Rumour had it that he could have had anything from a fighter to a starship but instead he’d chosen an armoured recovery vehicle and joined the Royal Engineers. Since being removed from the vehicle he had made himself a sort of small armoured cupola to hold him and his life-support requirements. The cupola was hanging from the frame by two powerful-looking waldos, making McShit look for all the world like a baby in some kind of machine-like cradle.

The top half of his tiny stunted body stuck out of the cupola, various wires extending from it to plugs in the base of his neck. His eyes were ugly, home-made but doubtless good-quality optics that stuck out from his skull like old-fashioned camera lenses.

The waldos swung the cupola along the metal frames in a kind of inverted loping gait until McShit came to rest in front of us both. He didn’t look pleased. Robby must’ve texted him via an internal cellular link that we were coming and that we were hot. I hoped it had been encrypted.

‘McShit,’ I said.

‘Don’t you McShit me. You’re fucking tracking mud everywhere, you radge cunt!’ he snarled. I looked down at the filthy concrete floor. The only way he could know that we had tracked in more mud was because it was covering our boots.

‘Sorry,’ I offered.

‘Robby says you’re in a lot of trouble.’ McShit glared in Robby’s direction.

‘I need to leave Dundee, get to-’ I began. McShit held up a hand.

‘That wasn’t what I asked. Same people after you who did the Pleasure?’

I nodded.

‘Lot of people dead, lot of people hurt. Too much. Nothing we can do about it in the community. There was a lot of steam, the water going meant some of the rigs got knocked about, people got crushed, lot of pain, and here’s us with no resources.’ He was shaking his head.

‘Wasn’t my doing,’ I said, thinking it was half true.

‘That’s government trouble that is, or a major couldn’t-give-a-shit corp,’ he said.

‘They’ve got special forces operators on the ground hunting for us. People I knew, bad types.’

‘You’re bringing me a lot of heat.’ I was worried I couldn’t read his expression. Suddenly the other Twists in the room all seemed to be paying attention.

‘I’m not denying that.’

‘Could be I’d do better handing you over to them – maybe a reward.’

‘Probably, though they might just kill you, plausible deniability and all that,’ I tried.

‘You’re from here, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘I live here.’

‘They’re not, are they?’

‘They all live in nice places.’

‘This is a nice place.’ I cracked a smile at this. Good old-fashioned them and us negotiation.

‘They be able to trace you here?’ McShit asked me.

‘They’d be able to trace us anywhere if they put their minds to it.’

‘We need to get you out of here then.’

‘We need to get to-’ I began.

‘Will you shut the fuck up?’ McShit snapped. ‘If what you say is right then some bad people are about to come and traipse more mud through my nice little world, and they’re going to come with anger in their hearts a poor general demeanour and the willingness to do me and mine harm. When that happens I am going to tell them exactly what I know about you. I am going to cooperate as much as is humanly possible for this twisted little body to do so. I will spill my guts.’

‘Come on, he can’t help us,’ Morag said angrily.