Total Conflict

by Neal Asher

  “Eh?” snapped Franco.

  HMGs whined, charging up, and bullets swept through the air in a sudden roar. Combat K rolled apart as bullets cut through brickwork and stone, screeching, ricochets pinging, and their guns turned on the Thumper, roaring, bullets scything across the short space with sudden hot metal impact. Bullets clanged up the Thumper’s battered shell, sparks flying, splinters of shaved metal curling off like red-hot glowing embers. Keenan sprinted through several doorways, bullets tracking him through brickwork with little puffs of powdered brick, and he dived long and low, rolling, slammed a wall and hurled a Babe Grenade through a gaping-tooth window. A Babe Grenade was so called (in QGM slang) because ‘it gave you a good fucking’. It proceeded to do this to the Thumper. Flames roared, and smoke rolled out engulfing the six-legged jittering clattering vehicle. Keenan kept his gun on the Thumper, face blacked, eyes narrowed in a scowl. This was supposed to be a Search and Rescue mission. DropBots said the planet was damn well clear. And now they were in the midst of a violent fire fight with an unknown enemy…

  “Bastard,” he muttered.

  The smoke cleared. The Thumper was unharmed.

  “YOU ARE NAUGHTY ORGANIC MACHINES!” came the nasal bureaucratic roar. “YOU ARE TO THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY! YOU ARE TO SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY! OR I WILL GET REALLY ANGRY.” A long thin barrel ejected from the side of the Thumper’s battered hull. There came a hiss as a pilot-light ignited. It was an IFT. An Industrial Flame Thrower. Or what they called in the business a Flesh Flame Griller.

  “Stuff this,” snapped Franco. “Cover me!” He lobbed out three smoke grenades, and the Thumper stamped its little piston legs and rotated, seeking the source of this OUTRAGE! Franco rolled sideways and came up running. Smoke billowed around him, and he heard Keenan and Pippa’s MPKs roar, drawing its fire. As he ran, arms pumping, he pulled round his pack and located a G15 funnel charge. “This’ll give him a poke up the arse,” he mumbled, slamming against a wall which teetered under the force of the blow. Smoke billowed, obscuring his view. He coughed, and ducking low, crept toward the sound of stamping metal feet.

  Guns whined. He could feel a chatter of discharge through the ground. Cordite stink rimed his nostrils. Smoke clung to his throat like a rescued fake jumper to a fireman’s ladder. He was close now. Close to the bastard. But if it realised, sensed him, it would turn and crush him. Gritting teeth, Franco crept closer and primed the charge – originally used for rock blasting in deep dark mines; Franco had found another use for this unusual and powerful explosive. The Thumper turned, it had sensed him, and through the smoke he heard guns whining and clacking. He leapt forward, slammed the charge on the Thumper’s metal abdomen, and ran for it…

  Guns clacked and bullets howled, slamming random shells around Franco in the smoke. He screamed like a girl and hit the ground, rolling, crawling as the Thumper shifted, all six legs striking the battered tarmac and a roar of flames told Franco the IFT had charged… he crept behind a wall, shouted, “Fire up her hole!” and hit the det. There came a deafening metallic bang, like a slap in the face, a kick in the balls, and billowing smoke was blasted into nothing as the Thumper was invaded and picked up, spinning into the sky at a diagonal angle where it struck a building, caving in a two-storey wall which followed the bent and twisted and still moaning Thumper all the way back down to the ground. Bricks tumbled and roared, and within a few seconds what remained of the Thumper’s twisted chassis was buried.

  From the sleeting dust came Keenan and Pippa, and Franco ran to them, a grin on his face.

  “That’s some charge,” said Keenan, gun tracking, eyes scanning.

  “Like a fist up the arse,” grinned Franco. “The bugger never saw it coming.”

  “What was it protecting?” said Pippa, shielding her eyes and gazing up, around.

  “There,” snapped Keenan.

  Amidst the rubble, the crumbled concrete, the detritus, they saw it – a solid, black, alloy missile block. Keenan’s eyes narrowed. “If the Thumper discovered we were here, on this deserted world…”

  “Then it knows we arrived on a ship,” finished Pippa. Even as she spoke, the missile block came to life, grinding on powerful engines as a long, sleek warhead ejected from a barrel and the block moved fast, whirring and shifting, the missile altering trajectory.

  Franco frowned. “Don’t be silly,” he chastised. “What could it possibly want?”

  The missile fired in a roar of flames and thick acrid smoke. Combat K choked, stumbling back. The missile flashed into the sky and was gone. Three seconds passed. Distantly, there came a boom and a narrow column of smoke rose into the air over the jungle.

  Keenan flashed Franco a sour glance. “Our fucking ship,” he snarled, and rubbed at his head. “The son of a bitch.”

  “Confirmed,” said Pippa, staring at the PAD. “It took out the Hornet.”

  “So even if we find Princess Kuminyana, we’ve no damn exit from the planet,” snapped Keenan, slapping his MPK.

  Franco gazed around, eyes wide, like a doe watching a sniper. “Bummer,” he said.

  “It’s coming alive,” said Pippa, solemnly.

  They watched from the trench, three kilometres from where they’d destroyed the Thumper. It had been a gradual thing at first, as they patrolled the streets, hunted down the ghost of the princess; a buzz here, a chirp there, like distant phonecalls, the reawakening of old electricity, but then three BombBlimps spun overhead, thrumming and droning, bomb-chutes open and ready for intruders and Keenan called a time-out.

  “It’s as if our presence has awoken them,” said Franco, in awe.

  “Yeah, that or your big mouth,” said Pippa.

  “Hey, I was only pointing out the obvious!”

  “Yeah, that and bombing the shit out of the bastard Thumper.”

  “It needed to be done,” said Franco, primly.

  “Stop arguing!” snapped Keenan. “How far does the PAD read?”

  “Five klicks.”

  “That’s a long way with Razor Drones buzzing your arse,” said Franco. As if to emphasise his words, a fleet of twenty Razor Drones snapped overhead, razors spinning, scanners on the lookout for enemy. Franco just knew he’d fall easily into that category.

  “What I don’t get,” said Pippa, uneasily, “is why they’ve suddenly come to life.”

  “Hmm?” Franco raised his eyebrows.

  “The automated defences. Shenzar City’s unwelcome denizens. The DropBots scanned this place as dead; even for AI. Now, the minute we tramp through, all shit is let loose. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “Maybe they sleep,” said Franco, eyes wide. “Maybe Kuminyana coming here woke them all up, and now they just want fresh meat!” He cocked his Kekra quad-barrel machine pistol. “Maybe they want a war!” He puffed out his chest. “Hot damn, we can give them one!” He went as if to stand up, and Keenan grabbed his WarSuit and dragged him back down to the trench.

  “Idiot,” he hissed. “They’ve been fighting this thing for centuries. You think three Combat K squaddies with machine guns can make a difference?”

  “We can always make a difference,” said Franco.

  “We’re here to find the girl,” said Keenan.

  “If she’s alive,” pointed out Franco.

  “Yeah. If she’s alive.”

  They spent the next three hours picking their way through ancient trenches. Razor Drones and scanning HovDrones buzzed overhead, banking between the towering walls of skyscrapers and cubeblocks. BombBlimps droned overhead, high and threatening, bomb doors and bomb slides waiting to drop more gratuitous violence on the unsuspecting below. In silence, a silence enforced by Keenan’s gun, boot and threat of court marshal and five months in solitary, Combat K crept like criminals through the trenches, streets, dugouts, alleys, backways, tunnels and cesspipes of Shenzar City, with the PAD guiding them towards the only, apparent, organic life in the vicinity.

  Eventually, Pippa moved ahead to scout, climbing a high
staircase in a half-bombed five-hundred storey residential towerblock to survey the surroundings. When she returned, she seemed excited. “I can see a Klasp Fighter,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “On top of Barb Hill. Up ahead. It has the markings of the Royal Guard. The W’hore Royal Family.”

  “I thought we saw the ship destroyed?” said Franco, brows furrowed.

  “We did. Cut into cubes, in fact.”

  “But now it’s OK? How’s that work, then?”

  “This gets stranger and stranger,” muttered Keenan.

  “Not as strange as my pants,” said Franco.

  Keenan glanced at him. “Meaning?”

  “Well, three nights ago I had an amore… an amour… a romantic meeting, reet, with this fit bird but she smelt of fish, and I thought to myself about this being a bit of a fishy meeting, reet, but then we went back to…”

  Keenan held up a hand. “Enough.”

  “It’s a good story.”

  “I’m sure it is. Pippa? You get any more signs of life?”

  “Only what’s on the PAD.” She smiled. “Oddly, Franco isn’t included.”

  “Let’s move in, then,” said Keenan.

  With Franco grumbling, they advanced.

  Trenches ended, and Combat K edged onto empty ground. There was a steep slope with many points of cover, but also many choke points to halt an advancing enemy. Carrying weapons, ammo and kit, all three were soon sweating heavily under the Vor heat haze, and as they climbed so the city spread around them, a nightmare of jagged buildings, staccato jumps, towering, blackened crumbling teeth. Barb Hill was, it transpired, a solid hill of war-scrap, old steel, rubbish and crap. It grew steeper as they climbed, Shenzar City spreading out like a visual disease, and Combat K kept guns primed and heads low, moving slowly, aware they were sitting ducks and as vulnerable as a stallion’s tackle. The Klasp Fighter loomed high above, distant, bullet marked, rocket scarred, but still in good enough order to fly. Keenan halted, panting, and looked off across the shimmering city. Drones buzzed in the distance, and he shielded his eyes.

  “Problem?” said Pippa.

  Keenan shook his head, and pushed on, until the pile of war-scrap levelled out a full kilometre in the sky, surrounded by staggered jumps of equally vertiginous skyblocks. Keenan tracked his MPK, eyes narrowed, and moved forward with Pippa and a honking, heaving Franco close behind. They formed a tight unit. A triumvirate of heavy firepower. Combat K.

  The Klasp was elongated, sleek, black; battered, scarred, and damaged. A door hissed open in the fighter’s flank. Kuminyana stood, hands held palms outwards in supplication, her dress spun in rich violet, her dark gloss hair tied back and high in an arty spiral. Her face was beautiful, with a very slight green hue, her cheekbones high and regal, skin flawless.

  “Wow,” panted Franco, hands on his knees. “Does that mean we can go to the pub?”

  Keenan stepped forward. “Your Highness,” he said. “We’ve come to take you home.”

  Princess Kuminyana surveyed the smoke-stained dirt-smeared group, and she smiled a radiant smile full of warmth, and happiness, and joy. Keenan felt shoulders relax, felt tension leak from his weary shell.

  “Wait.” Pippa was beside him. She whispered in his ear. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Thank you for travelling… all this way. It was unnecessary.” Kuminyana’s voice was high-pitched, sing-song, unused to the guttural language of Quad-Gal Central. The W’hores were an ancient race, but tended away from QG politics, sending the minimum number of emissaries and rarely attending political conventions. She frowned a little. “However. The reason my communications died were because… I did not wish to leave. Thank you for your efforts, Combat K. You may now return.”

  Keenan eyed Kuminyana. Pippa was right. Something about her was deeply disturbing; it was a splinter of oddness which ran through the woman; something about her manner, her stance, an indefinable element of character, the tilt of her head, the tone of her voice. Everything seemed, somehow, fake.

  “We have been assigned to bring you back,” said Keenan, voice low, eyes fixed on Kuminyana’s relaxed stance. “We cannot leave without you.” He clenched his teeth, muscles standing out along his jaw.

  “Yes you can,” she said, soothingly. And she smiled. It was the smile that did it. Something here was extraordinarily out of synch. “I insist.”

  “What happened to your spaceship?” butted in Franco, stepping forward, frowning, big mouth flapping as it always did. “We found it, back there, cut into chunks, it identified as your ship on the PAD, then we found a piece of gruesome scalp and we thought it was yours with skin and hair and everything, ugh, it was quite horrible, so it was.” He grinned at her, showing his missing tooth.

  “Maybe you should have turned back then,” said Kuminyana.

  “It was a set-up,” said Pippa, intuition sleeting through her. “You wanted us to think you were dead. Head home with that information; false information.”

  Kuminyana nodded “Yes.”

  “But why?” blurted out Franco. “Why’d you want to stay here, girl? It’s a crazy place! Full of dead technology and war bastards! Why, eh?”

  Kuminyana smiled. “Because I’m in love,” she said.

  They stared at her. Eventually, Pippa snapped, “There are easier ways to sort out your honeymoon than faking your own death, and putting us through the shit.”

  “No.” Kuminyana took a deep breath, and walked down the ramp from the Klasp Fighter. She stood on the mountain of war-scrap, and looked down at the ground for the moment, in consideration. The she looked up, and Keenan caught the dark glint in her semi-alien eyes. “It is illegal in W’hore culture for me to take one of another species. And especially one of such… non organic origins.”

  “You’ve fallen in love with an AI?” said Pippa, slowly.

  “More than that,” said Kuminyana. She spread her arms wide, as if encompassing the world. “He is the Psi.copath. He reads your thoughts, and mine; and this is his place, his world, his army, his war! All the HovDrones and BombBlimps, Thumpers, Intruders, Razor Skells, leashed SPAWs and second-hand GriTags, all are his, under his command, and he will build his army strong again, he will take the war from Shenza City and I will rule beside him! We will rule Vor together!” Her eyes glinted in madness now, and Combat K saw she carried a small gun. It was black, nestled in her hand, and they froze.

  “Are you fucking insane?” snarled Pippa. “We’re here to rescue you!”

  “If you will not leave, then you must die.”

  Pippa spread her arms wide. “Come with us, girl!”

  “As I said.” Kuminyana smiled; almost in apology. Almost.

  She fired the gun, a hollow bark, but hadn’t reckoned on Combat K’s well-oiled unit perfection; they rolled apart fast, inhumanly fast, and the bullet clipped Franco’s WarSuit which gave a deep buzz. Franco scowled. “Hey, bitch, why’d you shoot at me?”

  Keenan came up, palmed his Techrim 11mm, and slammed a bullet in Kuminyana’s shoulder. The bullet exited on a shower of pissing blood and shoulder shards, and Kuminyana staggered back, face pale, gasping, and she began to fire again and Keenan dropped to one knee and levelled his gun. But before he could shoot, there came a blam of a D5 shotgun, and Kuminyana accelerated backwards like a ragdoll, limbs flailing, hit the side of the Klasp Fighter, slumped down in a heap, and was still.

  “What did you do that for?” raged Keenan, turning on Pippa. “We take her down, then fucking take her with us!”

  “I rarely shoot to wound,” said Pippa, voice cold. “Only to kill.”

  “You lunatic! You’re bringing your personal life into this game, and you’re going to get us all dead.”

  Pippa shrugged, turned, and stared off across Shenzar City. “Big boys games, big boys rules,” she said, and sheathed her D5 shotgun, drawing both yukana swords from sheaths on her back. “Anyway. It was a D5 SpreadShot. If I’d wanted her dead,” she twirled a sword, “I would h
ave cut her damn head off.” She turned back, and seemed to be waiting.

  “What are you doing?” said Franco, slowly, glancing about with nerves jangling.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” said Pippa. She smiled. It was a smile of intrinsic knowledge. “The Psi.copath won’t let us leave. We’d ruin its plans. And it knows that; knows we couldn’t take Kuminyana with us.”

  “So you shot her?” said Keenan.

  “You’re a brutal bitch,” said Franco.

  “I never claimed to be anything different. Better get your guns ready. It’s coming.”

  “What is?”

  “The Psi.copath, idiot.”

  There came a roar, so low it was below hearing then rose in electronic pitch till it made their eardrums bleed. Wincing in agony, Pippa twirled her swords and scowled and she knew, they were going to fight for their lives and this wasn’t a fucking rescue mission, it was a gang rape, a QGM bureaucratic fuck-up of the usual incredible magnitude. The pile of war-scrap beneath their boots began to move, to writhe, and plates of steel and iron rattled across the surface and everything seemed suddenly to be moving, shifting, a quicksand of metal and old bullets, of iron beams and engine parts, and wires snaked and hissed across the surface and Pippa screamed, “We have to get in the Klasp, it’s our only chance!” but the fighter was moving also, shifting on the mountain of moving metal rubble and then set off, sliding down the slope, sparks screaming and streaming to turn suddenly, coming to rest at a teetering angle on the brink of a ledge which led to a thousand metre drop. If the Klasp went over the edge… goodbye journey home.

  Still, the mountain top rattled and seethed, a bubbling of metal parts, and Combat K watched in confusion at first, then with a gradual understanding as the Psi.copath assembled itself from the garbage of the war-torn world. It rose from the mound like a monster from a tar-pit, and its head was a FukTruk’s engine block, its eyes old headlamps, its body the chassis of several conjoined tanks. Its arms were heavy-duty 7.62mm mini-guns, its legs were H-section girders, and even as they watched it became riddled with armoured scales made from tank plates, the tail sections of destroyed R52 MiG fighters and buckled car panels which scampered up its flanks, toppling untidily into place; the engine for its head suddenly roared into life with a belch of exhaust and headlamps illuminated a bright yellow, dazzling beams sweeping the ground searching for Combat K. The Psi.copath rose above a gawping, surprised combat squad and looked down at them with arms spinning, whining, accelerating and the guns came up and the Psi.copath took a heavy clanking step forward and bullets roared as Combat K fled, leaping from the summit of the metal mountain and sliding down the far slope, boots trying to dig in as they were carried in a sudden avalanche of metal debris, old cans and broken guns, buckled panels and crap.