Crysis Escalation

Daimyo (a fragment)





Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, 2024

He’d read all of the warrior philosophers. Sun Tzu, Musashi, Clausewitz. The practical stuff, whilst much of it was often common sense, was a useful grounding in strategies. The rest of it’s navel-gazing bullshit to try and rationalise away killing a lot of people, in this marine’s opinion General Sherman Barclay thought as he looked at the half-full crystal glass of single malt whiskey. There’s no decency in war. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’re defending your country, the rest of time you’re proving to some intransigent that you’re a bigger bastard than they are. In short, if you were a soldier, you did what you were told. He was a four-star general and commandant of the, until recently, United States Marine Corps. He’d got the job as a result of the cluster-f*ck in New York. It was a rank he’d never wanted, but now that he had it he found that he also didn’t want to do what he was told.

The screen on the wall of his study was showing a newsfeed from the Macronet. His story hadn’t been at the top of the program, but he knew it was coming. The lead story was still CELL related. He watched a tall, old man, with features that reminded him of a hunting bird of prey, walk out of a huge skyscraper in Frankfurt into an explosion of camera flashes. His security were pushing reporters and paparazzi out of the way as he made his way to the waiting eight-wheeled armoured Mercedes limousine.

‘The boardroom coup ousting of Karl Ernst Rasch, CEO of Hargreave-Rasch BioChemical, comes as no surprise to business analysts in the wake of his comments criticising their subsidiary company, the CELL Corporation. Hargreave-Rasch has had some turbulent years, culminating in a name change to distance themselves from alleged unethical medical experiments. Rasch publicly spoke out against the energy giant’s alleged use of Ceph-derived technology in its New York facility . . .’

‘And f*ck you, too,’ Barclay said and muted the sound. He was sat at his desk, still in his dress blues, his service M1911 on the blotter paper in front of him. He had disassembled it and cleaned it. The drilled-in repetition of the process helped him clear his mind. The whiskey had helped him fuzz it up some. He rapidly reassembled the .45.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, as a young Captain, he had talked to a special forces operator who had told him that if anyone ever pulled a pistol on him, he should just turn and run. The operator had been of the opinion that pistols were so inaccurate that if you added the stress of combat, people had next to no chance of hitting anything. After that conversation Barclay had made it his business to be the best damn combat pistol shooter in the Marine Corps. A skill he’d had to put to good use on more than one occasion.

He slid a magazine into the pistol and worked the slide to chamber a round. An empty gun was nobody’s friend. He left the pistol hot, the safety off. It was against Corps regulations. It was a special forces trick, they wanted to draw and fire rapidly and smoothly. After all, it wasn’t like he had to worry about kids or grandkids in the house. He didn’t even have to worry about a wife anymore. Susan had told him when she had left that the marines were his mistress and she had never been able to compete.

He held the M1911 up and let the side of it rest against the grey hair on his temple. The black metal was cool against his head. He put it down on the gun-oil stained blotting paper. Next to his pride and joy.

Barclay had grown up in New York in a hard, working-class, Irish-American neighbourhood in the Bronx. His dad had loved westerns and from his dad he had inherited a love of America’s frontier history. As a child his father had taken him to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, to see the grave of William Barclay Masterton, better known as Bat Masterton. Masterton had been a buffalo hunter, army scout, Indian fighter, a gunman and a lawman. He had been a contemporary of Wyatt Earp’s. A young Sherman Barclay had been struck by the coincidence of sharing the same name with Masterton, even if it was only the gunman’s middle name.

He had been a newly promoted first lieutenant when the gun had come up for auction. A .45 Colt Peacemaker owned by Bat Masterton his own damned self, complete with notches on the grip. What had tickled Barclay about the pistol most of all was that it hadn’t been the one used in Dodge City or in Colorado during the railroad wars. It was one of two pistols that Masterton had bought from pawnshops in New York when he was working there as a newspaper man and writer in the latter part of his life. He’d cut notches in them and sold them to people, telling them they were the pistols from his gun-fighting days.

It had taken every last penny of his savings and a loan that he’d lied to the bank about. Susan and he had only just got married and it was one of the worst arguments they had ever had, but he had bought the gun. Over a period of years he’d lovingly restored it, and then, because he hated useless things, he’d learnt to shoot with it. That hadn’t been easy. He suspected that throwing live canaries at a dartboard would prove to be more accurate than the damn Peacemaker.

He had just finished cleaning the Peacemaker when he appeared on the news feed. His dress blues hadn’t been in disarray this morning, when he had betrayed every instinct he had, not to mention a number of regulations and outright laws. When he’d held his impromptu press conference at Arlington Cemetery.

The caption under the footage read: General Sherman Barclay blows the whistle on CELL’s control over Marines.

He hadn’t intended on being a soldier. Even as late as college he wasn’t sure what he had wanted to be. Football had secured him a partial scholarship, damned hard work on the part of his mother, father and older brother had made him the first person in his family to go to college. His father and brother were heating contractors. They had worked in downtown Manhattan a lot. His father had seen the lifestyle of the people who worked downtown, and he had wanted that for his son. Sherman had been less sure. Both his father and his brother had been in 7 World Trade Centre on the ninth of September 2001. He had joined the marines after he graduated the following year.

Then, like Susan had said, he had fallen in love. The United States Marine Corps was older than the country it served. It had fought in every significant conflict America had been involved in. From fighting for the country’s independence in the American Revolutionary War to going toe-to-toe with alien invaders in the streets of his hometown. He didn’t mind admitting that they’d had their arses kicked in New York, but he was proud of every last one of his men and women who had conducted a fighting retreat from alien war machines long enough to evacuate civilians from the ruined city.

The marines had made mistakes, no doubt about it. He’d witnessed atrocities, seen the shelling of civilian population centres. There were monsters and cowards in its ranks, though he had rooted those he could find out with ruthless efficiency when he had taken command. But he was more proud of the men and women who had served the Corps than anything else in a long, bloody, exciting, hard life.

Then the companies had come. He had watched the privatisation of war with disgust throughout his military career. In his opinion, the moment the focus went from duty and loyalty to the man next to you to a pay cheque, the coherence wrought by military discipline was gone. At best you got badly equipped individuals in way over their heads. At worst you got atrocity.

He wasn’t some peace-loving, anti-capitalist hippy protestor. He remembered when they had occupied Wall Street. Unlike many amongst his peers, he had had respect for them. Rightly or wrongly, they had taken a stand for what they believed in. He’d been furious when they’d started getting beaten and moved on, silenced. Their right to voice their opinions was one of the things he had thought he’d been fighting for. Nowadays they would just be branded as terrorists and mown down by corporate goons, like the so-called Resistor group that had been protesting outside a CELL facility in Tokyo. Barclay had read the intelligence briefings on them. They hadn’t been terrorists, that was spin bullshit. They’d just been kids.

He’d studied business in college. He had no problem with capitalism. His dad had made him believe that if you worked hard you should get rewarded for it. The double dip had proved that capitalism and corporations needed restraints. That compassion and responsibility had to be more important than the rapacious profiteering of a tiny minority. Some things just couldn’t be left to an institute whose primary concern was the generation of wealth, the wellbeing of the people of your country being one of them. Instead the world had gone the other way.

And now the same company who had come for his beloved hometown had come for his beloved Corps. He didn’t care that it had all been agreed in Washington, set up by bribe-welcoming politicians in shady backroom deals. CELL had control of the Corps now, and could use them for whatever they wanted.

‘Not on my watch,’ he muttered, only slurring a little bit.

He didn’t even flinch as the lockbuster shotgun rounds blew off the hinges of the door to his house. Little dramatic, he thought. He picked up the Peacemaker and stuffed it into the waistband of his dress trousers.

They sauntered into his office. They had checked first and seen a broken-down old man slumped in a leather chair with a whiskey in his hand. There were five of them. He could hear others moving around his house. Things were being loudly broken in other rooms. They wore sharp suits, carried piece-of-shit Feline SMGs and were dumb enough to wear sunglasses inside. Barclay didn’t think he would have liked them even if they hadn’t just damaged the door on a house more than a hundred years old.

‘Sherman Barclay,’ one of them started. He was stood in front of Barclay’s desk. He had the false confidence of someone with a gun facing a broken man. Though he did glance down at the M1911 lying on the blotting paper on Barclay’s mahogany desk.

‘General Barclay,’ he corrected the man.

‘Not any m . . .’

‘Are you wearing perfume, son?’ Barclay demanded.

‘Erm . . . What?’ the man was taken aback by the tone of command in the General’s voice. ‘It’s aftershave.’

‘Perfume. My marines don’t wear perfume, and neither would you if you had any goddamned self-respect. What the f*ck are you and your little pantywaists doing in my house other than using up perfectly good oxygen?’

‘We’re here . . .’

‘You address me as sir, or General, or you can get out of my house, understand me, boy?’

The boy with a gun in front of him was starting to lose confidence in his ability to deal with this mean old man. He glanced down at the M1911 again. Barclay followed his gaze and then looked the gunman in the eyes. He just saw himself reflected in mirror shades, but he knew the other man looked away first.

‘Sir, we’re here to take you into custody . . .’

‘Under whose authority?’

‘The board of CELL . . .’

‘Who are a private company. This makes about as much sense as being arrested by Ronald McDonald. I don’t recognise their authority. What am I supposed to be charged with?’

‘Treason against . . .’

Barclay was on his feet. Five SMGs were suddenly pointed at him by very nervous corporate gunmen. He was pointing at the man in front of him. Whiskey or no whiskey, his hand was steady.

‘You listen to me, you failed abortion, my loyalty, my duty, my honour . . .’ one of the gunmen laughed, a sneer on his face. ‘. . . has been proven in fire and blood. You stand where thousands of men and women far better than you have stood and you have the gall to accuse me of treason. Your very presence here is a goddamned insult to every marine who died in some godforsaken shithole, from Tripoli to Okinawa, for your f*cked up sense of entitlement and your disrespect. Get the f*ck off my base now, before I beat you off it!’

‘. . . Against CELL ,’ the gunman finished. Barclay just stared at him. Then he started laughing.

‘What does that even mean, boy?’

‘It means you have to come with me.’

‘Or what?’

‘We’re authorised to use force in your apprehension.’

Barclay nodded.

‘You sure about that, son?’ he asked.

‘General, sir . . .’

If they had sent marines, even MPs, instead of these suited, pencil-neck, executive gunmen. If they had saluted him, shown respect to the rank, the Corps that he had been commandant of until this morning, a rank he had earned the hard way, he would have gone quietly, maybe.

He grabbed the M1911 from the desk. The first shot was one-handed and it was point blank range. He put the big hollow-point round between the gunman who’d been doing all the talking’s eyes. The back of his head came off as the hollow point mushroomed.

He shifted, moving to one side. Bringing his hand holding the M1911 into a two-handed standing position. The one who had laughed was next. Nothing petty, but that one wanted to shoot, Barclay had recognised the type. Two rounds. He went down.

He moved, crossing behind his chair. Don’t stand still in a gunfight, bullets will come looking for you. Two more rounds. He was sure he had just winged the gunman closest to the door but he went down and didn’t start firing.

The last two had started firing now. Inexperienced as they were, they had at least managed to react. Bullets blew splinters out of a desk more than two hundred years old. His crystal decanter exploded, spraying him in whiskey. He was still moving to the side. He fired twice more and a gunwoman went down. The final gunman was firing the Feline, spraying wildly as he made for the door. Barclay registered the look of panic on the gunman’s face. A round caught Barclay in his left shoulder, knocking him back. He took aim. The gunman saw his death coming and he couldn’t understand why the gun bucking away in his hand wasn’t going to save him. The round caught the gunman in the head. He walked another step, still firing and then collapsed to the ground.

Cordite smoke filled the room. Then the pitiful whining of the wounded started. It was just like any other battle. It was the one closest to the door who was still alive. He had just winged him. The slide on his M1911 was back, the gun empty. No, he thought, not a battle, a gunfight. One of the things that Barclay had always liked most about the stories of Bat Masterton was that the gunfighter had apparently been a genuinely good shot. Not a spray and pray merchant.

He heard them first. They came charging through the double doors. Barclay let go of the empty M1911. He fast-drew the Peacemaker from his waist band. Oh, how long I practiced that. They started firing. He fanned the hammer on the single-action revolver rapidly, firing from the hip. The M1911 hit the desk. The hammer on the Peacemaker clicked down on an empty chamber.

Somehow he’d hit all three of the entering gunmen. With six rounds, fanning, firing from the hip, admittedly at close range, he’d hit all three, as it mattered in a gunfight.

‘Can you see me now, Bat?’ he said to himself and smiled, and then he staggered back and sat down hard in his chair. The one in the gut hurt the most but he was sure it was the round in the chest that would kill him. Breathing was difficult, like there was some kind of obstruction to it.

All the warrior philosophy was bullshit. Eight dead young men scattered around his house, sent by cowards, proved that. If he had managed, somehow, amongst all that bloodshed, to be a decent man then that was something his father had taught him. It hadn’t come from a book. But he had taken two things away from all that bullshit. Sometimes questioning and disobedience were the most patriotic things that you could do. The Founding Fathers had taught him that.

He could hear vehicles skidding to a halt outside. Footsteps, running. There was shouting outside.

The second thing: when a samurai disagreed with his daimyo, his lord, the ultimate protest he could make was to take his own life. This ritual form of suicide by disembowelment was called seppuku.

That was bullshit as well, Barclay thought as shaking fingers managed to put one more round into the Peacemaker. I just want to make the decision on how I go out. He had never felt that anybody owed him anything, not the country, not the people, not the marines, not the government – well, maybe the government sometimes – but as a reward for more than thirty years of service: frankly, this sucks ass.

As he put the barrel of the gun to his head and cocked the hammer he thought about Susan. He thought about his father.

They burst into his office brandishing weapons and shouting. There had always been shouting in his life, ever since he’d joined the Corps anyway.

‘Semper Fidelis,’ he told them. He squeezed the trigger.

None of them noticed his final act of “treason’. The camera in the plant pot in the corner, broadcasting to the Macronet.

‘There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I’ll swear I can’t see it that way.’

William Barclay “Bat” Masterton, New York City, 1921