Theme Planet Read Online Free PDF Page A

right?” He grinned, then, and slapped Dex on
the back. Both men climbed to their feet and stood beneath the ashy rain. It
stained them. Dirtied their purity.
     
    “Shit,” said Dex. “Just what I
need on my last bloody day of work. A triple homicide.”
     
    “At least you’re going on
holiday! I’ve got more of this to come.” Jones’s eyes gleamed. “Lots more.”
     
    “So they’re bad, these...” Dex
savoured the words, “Anarchy Androids?”
     
    “As bad as they get,” said Jones.
“Experts. At torture. Murder. They have no emotions. They have no fear. And
they’re tougher than a hard-boiled motherfucker. This one we found, out in the
jungle on Tashkan during Helix. Well, it took ten of us to drop her. Ten of us, Dexter. And she took out a fucking perimeter tank with her bare hands. “
     
    Dex holstered his D4 and walked
back towards their BMW PUF Battlecar.
     
    He thought about his children. He
thought about his family. He thought about losing his family. He thought about
how the stakes seemed to get worse and worse, every single day.
     
    Was it worth it?
     
    Was it all really worth
it?
     
    And he thought, as he
occasionally had, about resignation.
     
    What would Kat do if some
mad-crazed Anarchy Android bitch took his head clean off in the line of duty?
     
    Shit. Shit.
     
    Thank God I’m going on holiday, he thought. It would give him
space, and time to think. Time to talk. Time to make a decision.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Dex entered the low-slung
dung-bar and the door slammed shut behind him with the sound of a loading
shotgun. The bar was military themed, and called The Full Metal Jacket. Dex
grinned. He fucking loved that film. Especially the bit where the Cong
Aliens attacked during the Tet5 Offensive, and the retro-panning during the
squeezy-boat journey up the Perfume Bottle River in LOS Los Angeles.
     
    Pegg was at the bar, and gave him
a vague hand gesture. Dex’s grin fell as if he’d been knifed. Pegg was well on
his way to the dark side of non-sobriety. Shit. Next thing he’d be telling Dex
he was his father...
     
    Dex moved to the bar, where a
small, bald barman with a skin ponytail was pulling Japachinese beer into
glittering diamond tankards.
     
    “Can I help you, son?” he
drawled.
     
    “I’ll have a pint of Dublin.
Anything for you, Pegg?”
     
    “A half of PissWhiskey.”
     
    Dex hopped onto a high stool,
which gave the click of a landmine priming. Oh the comedy! thought Dex. “You out to get drunk, mate?”
     
    Pegg looked up then, and Dex read
the pain - the anguish - in his face. Here was a man not just betrayed, but
destroyed. Dex’s heart fell like a stone down a well, and straight out of his
arsehole. Shit. This was going to be a long night.
     
    “Yes.”
     
    Dex accepted his black beer and
sipped the thick stuff. It went down well. Too well. Like treacle through a
toilet pipe. “Kat said you caught Meesha.” His voice was gentle. “Want to talk
about it?”
     
    “Talk about it? I’ll slit the
bitch’s throat.”
     
    “What happened?”
     
    Pegg stared at Dex through
bloodshot eyes. “I know you thought I was crazy. Paranoid. Fuck it, even I felt paranoid. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to
get you, right?”
     
    “Hmm.”
     
    “It started off with her working
longer and longer hours. Said it was the traffic. But the timings didn’t add
up. I mean, she was taking three hours to get home and I knew, fucking knew it was an hour and a half, max. Then she was leaving for work earlier and
earlier, but I was drinking too much anyway by that point, so it took me a few
months to notice. Turns out she was leaving for work early so she could leave work even earlier; and that’s when she was meeting him.”
     
    “Who?”
     
    “Smark.”
     
    “Your best friend?”
     
    “Yeah. That back-stabbing
wife-grabbing cunt.”
     
    “Pretty low, that. To do that to
your best friend.”
     
    “Wait ‘til you find