by Andy Remic
“Yeah? So? Well? Danger is my middle name! Reet?”
“An IMS was the one thing that managed to stop MICHELLE dead in her tracks. It’s one serious piece of industrial hardware, and I’m not too happy about you smuggling the bastard with us. It’s bad enough to think you’ve got a gun. But that!”
“I like to know I’m tooled up,” persisted Franco. “I just wished I’d had it to hand when those choppers attacked me. Did I say me? I meant us.”
“What, so you could have destroyed half a city block? Franco, it’s lethal with a capital L. We’re supposed to be on a covert infil. What were you thinking? That we’d eat our way into NanoTek’s HQ through a few klicks of solid concrete?”
“Hey, that’s a bloody good idea!”
“And that’s why I plan and you fly.”
As they argued, the water beneath them became increasingly choppy. Little white waves spun jagged detail across the ocean’s ice-rimed surface. Above, a fifty-lane freeway servicing the NanoTek HQ on mammoth crystal supports sat, desolate and forlorn; a deserted, abandoned road to nowhere; a Highway to Hell.
“Any sign of Cam?” Franco was cheery. Optimistic. It was galling.
“No.”
“Any message from Steinhauer?”
Keenan checked his PAD. “No.”
“What about Pippa?”
“Why would Pippa contact me?”
Franco stared at Keenan. “We-elll, I bet she knows we’re here, and I bet she wants to see us, and she did used to be your bird.”
“So?”
“So, you had some, y’know, fun times together.”
The Apache F52, battered, bruised and scorched, started to make a rattling, banging sound. It was unhealthy, in a mechanically failing kind of way.
“Our past relationship is irrelevant. She wants me dead. I want her dead. You could say our love is over.”
“Ahh, it’s never over ‘til the fat lady sings.”
“What kind of garbage statement is that?”
“I heard it, I did.”
Keenan sighed, and Franco took the Apache down low over the waves. Rolling ocean crashed beneath them, the chopper’s rhythmical passage bouncing from a vast seascape.
Franco tapped the Apache’s scanner. “Damn and bloody blast.”
“Something up?”
“It’s broke.”
Keenan snorted a laugh. “What, the scanner or the whole fucking machine?”
“Don’t be like that, Keenan. This baby has taken us to hell and back! She’s reliable! Hard-working! And when she wants to kick arse, she can really kick arse!”
The rocket seemed to come from nowhere; it slammed the tail section of the Apache howling in a raging, expanding inferno that ate the combat chopper’s rear end and sent rotors whirling and screaming off across the ocean, where they skimmed, and struck down with super-heated fizzes.
Alarms shrieked, and smoke poured into the cockpit.
“Abandon ship!” wailed Franco, but before they could do anything the Apache stalled and dropped from the sky, like a bird hit by a bullet. It struck the ocean with harsh impact, black waters slamming aside as Combat K grabbed what they could, struggling into packs as freezing ocean rolled away and then surged inside and the Apache began to quickly sink...
There were hisses, clouds of smoke and steam. The fireball at the machine’s tail-end was extinguished. Smoke rolled through a crisp clear night.
Keenan gasped, losing his cigarette. He struggled free of the Apache’s cabin cell and trod water, which chilled him instantly. There came a crackle as his thermal jacket adjusted—the one thing keeping him alive in such a chilled environment. His narrowed eyes roved the black sky, searching for the enemy, and he hoisted his MPK around and above his head, trying to keep the weapon dry.
“Reliable and hard-working?” snorted Keenan, as Franco swam towards him. They both watched as the Apache, bubbling merrily, sank below the rolling ocean and was swiftly claimed.
“Help,” said Xakus, who was struggling, some feet away.
Keenan swam to him, eyes still sweeping the sky. Something had brought them down. Had it been an automated system, like Steinhauer had warned him about, or another aircraft? Either way, Keenan was feeling twitched.
“What’s the matter?”
In the dark, Keenan couldn’t see shit. He blinked, attempting to adjust his vision to ambient light. Below them, the Apache disappeared, a huge fountain of bubbles erupting on the surface of the ocean.
“Shrapnel. From the explosion.” Xakus was grimacing in pain, and Keenan grabbed him to stop him going under. Waves lifted them, undulating, and dropping them savagely into a trough. Xakus spluttered on black brine.
“Are you bad?”
Before Xakus could answer, they heard the rotors of the Black Tiger KAZ Gunship. It cruised, low over the ocean, search lights sweeping left and right. It slowed near their crash zone.
“Bastards,” snapped Keenan. “Well, that answers that question.”
The combat chopper was lit internally by an eerie green glow. They could see the crowd of zombies, lolling, pus-strewn faces searching for survivors.
The chopper circled, rotors thumping.
“They found us, then,” observed Franco. “I knew it. I knew we should have stayed and hunted them down. I did, I said to you, we should have stayed and hunted them down. I did.”
“Franco, shut it.”
“Yeah boss.”
Keenan became suddenly aware Xakus had passed out. He grasped the man tight, and realised in anger he could no longer fire his weapon. If he let go of Xakus, the professor would sink...
“Shit. Shit.” Keenan gritted his teeth, eyes narrowed and fixed on the circling, zombie-filled helicopter.
“Don’t worry,” whispered Franco, bobbing on a rising wave, then splashing back down into a trough. “I’m on it. I’m the man, the dude, the guy for the gig.”
Searchlights swept.
There came a whine from the chopper... and Keenan found himself debating the issue of his own survival when suddenly, from the water beside Franco, there surged a barrage of bubbles and the long grey barrel of the IMS.
Keenan started to mouth the word “No!” as Franco hoisted the weapon and unleashed hell and fury at the searching helicopter. The IMS whined, and there came a whump as molecular disintegration lashed through the heavens and the chopper slammed right, banking sharply, warning systems screaming. Keenan could hear onboard shrills from weapon detection systems; the chopper’s AI knew what an IMS was, and the destruction it could bring.
The Black Tiger opened fire, miniguns howling and Keenan ducked under the ocean, down into a cold obsidian muffled world dragging Xakus with him. Franco slammed the IMS around, charged it again, and unleashed a scream of energy which cut through the Black Tiger’s runners and sent it spinning off through the dark under-sky. Franco, grinning like a maniac, muttered to himself, “Bastards! Blowing us from the sky then wanting to come down here with dirty guns and pick us off when we’re bobbing on the sea well we’ll have to see about that because Franco Haggis is here to save the day and he’s not taking none of your crap and believe me this weapon is a bad ass weapon and they don’t call me Franco ‘Happy Detonation’ Haggis for nothing!” The IMS howled, and reality seemed to warp and wobble around the industrial demolition tool. Inside the Black Tiger, the zombies were fighting and screeching. The IMS beam slammed through the Black Tiger, first cutting it in half vertically, and, as Franco waved the Industrial Molecule Stripper around in his calloused powerful hands like a madman with a chainsaw, horizontally. The Black Tiger, effectively quartered and spitting showers of sparks and outpourings of fuel, toppled in cubes into the ocean where the fuel flared and the wreckage ignited, burning atop the rolling waves.
“Ha!” said Franco, switching off the IMS with a clump. The machine vibrated for a while in his hands, then was still. “No bugger’s going to mess with this redneck!”
Keenan surfaced, dragging the uncon
scious form of Xakus with him. He glared at Franco. “You finished, idiot?”
“Idiot? Moi? I think you will find, Mr Keenan, that once again the wily and wonderful Franco has saved the day! He has disposed of the dastardly enemy! Spliced their little attack chopper into pieces! Saved us all from a sound and jolly buggering!”
Keenan paddled close, until his face was inches from Franco’s. Then, so close the glare of nearby fires burning on the ocean reflected crazy-lights in his narrowed eyes, he growled, “Take a good look around, you drug-infused moron.”
Franco licked his lips. Had there been something he’d overlooked? There couldn’t have been. He was Franco! And Franco never, well, rarely, well, sometimes, well, many times, made mistakes. And on this occasion he’d been super careful! He’d been sure of his actions! Hadn’t he? After all, they were out at sea. What could possibly go wrong?
Franco turned, paddling in the black ocean. Overhead, the fifty-lane freeway veered in a climbing arc soaring high into the heavens and blocking out the stars. Franco stared hard at the freeway. Perhaps a kilometre across, it was vast, epic, a monument of world-class engineering skill. An example of man conquering nature, and imposing his Will over the World.
Franco opened his mouth to say something.
Then he closed it again.
He squinted.
One of the fifty-foot-diameter crystal support struts had a narrow, glowing line across its base. Franco stared hard at that line. Stared at it for a long time.
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t possibly have.”
Keenan was by his ear. “I think you’ll find it’s much worse than that,” he hissed.
Franco peered again, myopically. The next support strut had four glowing criss-cross marks on its flank; simple orange lines, like scars of molten glass. Franco looked to the next strut. And that, also, was marked.
“That can’t have been little old me,” he said, finally, uneasily.
“What fucking range setting did you have on the thing?”
“Only about...” Franco stopped. It was fifty metres, right? He’d clicked it to fifty metres. 50.0m. He stared down at the dial. He felt something curl up and die inside his belly.
It was set to 500 metres.
Franco looked up. Up. Up.
Above, several glowing lines of molten steelconcrete criss-crossed the fifty-lane freeway. Even as he watched, the titanic mega-structure gave a long, low, agonising groan. It was a concrete dinosaur, dying. A Ket-i World Warrior in the throes of global agony. A behemoth ready to awake.
“No! Shit! Keenan! It wasn’t me! It can’t have been me! I mean, even I’m not that stupid!”
Keenan was swimming hard, dragging Xakus behind him by the scruff.
“Hey? Where you going? What you doing, Keenan? Come back!”
Franco started paddling after him.
Keenan turned. Glared at his friend. “Swim, you idiot! When that lot comes down it’s gonna drag a whole load of shit under the ocean! We need to get out of the suction radius.”
“Hey, relax, it’s not gonna fall! Don’t be silly! Don’t be a crazy fool!” Franco swam on, a beady eye peering back over his shoulder. Already the pillars had started to shift, minutely at first, molten edges screeching in a torturous, long-drawn out wail which became gradual agony to the ears and made Franco want to vomit.
“It just can’t fall!” he whispered.
A sound like thunder began. The two men powered through the ocean, heads down, entire strength focused on swimming now; and swimming fast.
The thunder warbled and rumbled through the heavens, growing louder and louder and louder and louder. Behind, dust and chunks of concrete started to fall, tumbling from the slow-motion undulating freeway. Huge splashes echoed across the ocean. Waves rammed Keenan and Franco, and they both swam faster in accelerating urgency. Franco’s arms pumped like pistons and he overtook Keenan at a rapid crawl, then stopped, grabbed hold of Xakus, and helped tow the unconscious professor after them.
“I think it’s gonna fall,” he gulped at Keenan, spitting out water.
“You don’t say.”
“Where we going?”
Keenan nodded. “There’s an oil-carrier platform over there. I think we’ll be safe. That is, unless the fall creates a fucking tsunami to wash us to our well-deserved deaths.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I’m a soldier, Franco, not an expert in hydrodynamics.”
They reached the platform, which was rusted, greasy, and bobbing wildly as more and more chunks fell from the towering, swaying, kilometre-wide freeway. Keenan climbed up, hauled Xakus after him, and dumped the man on the corrugated deck. He helped Franco to scramble, little legs kicking, aboard. Keenan traced around the dark edges, and found the platform linked to something beneath the sea by wrist-thick chains.
Keenan rolled Xakus to his back, then rolled him over, locating the wound in the man’s flank. Beneath, a rib was broken, and a ten inch gash, not too deep, had been carved in flesh from the explosion aboard the Apache. Keenan found his medkit and applied field strips, effectively gluing the professor’s flesh together. He turned the man’s thermal jacket to full. Out there, in the ice-laden ocean, they were all beginning to freeze.
As he finished his work, Keenan looked up, watched the freeway teetering around in the darkness, then slowly topple sideways, pillars sliding apart with gruesome growling sounds, disintegrating neatly, a billion billion tonnes of steelconcrete sliding under the surging water carrying abandoned cars and juggernauts, and twenty-carriage ultra-coaches.
Grimly, Keenan injected Xakus with painkillers and nutrients, and spat discharged stingbots into the rolling, seething ocean.
“Bad habit, that,” said Franco, watching uneasily as a fifteen trillion dollar building development sank in a surge of bubbles and churning black.
“You’re the bad habit! Franco, are you sure want to continue on this mission?”
“I must rescue Mel.” He sulked.
“Well, in that case, you do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you. Or I’m going in alone.”
“You can’t do that! I have rights!”
“Oh yeah? Well for the first time in history, Franco, I’m going to pull rank on you. Now, you do what you’re told. And that’s a fucking order. Understand?”
“Mnmnffmnf.”
“I said, UNDERSTAND?”
“No need to shout. I get it. It’s got. Up here. In my skull.” He tapped his head.
The platform rolled violently, pulling at its clanking chains which stretched, screeching and dripping iced brine. Where the freeway slice had tumbled beneath the waves, the sea surged and bubbled as if boiling. Distantly, buoys clanged. The ocean seemed to roar, and it went on for a long, long time...
And was gone.
The ocean fell still. Eerily still.
Xakus groaned, sitting up, touching his side tenderly. His fingers explored the repair strips, then he rubbed at his head and accepted the water canteen from Keenan.
“So we survived, then.”
“Just,” said Keenan, throwing Franco an evil glare.
“We’re not far. From the entry point. You still want to go in the front gates?”
Keenan shrugged. “I kind of get the feeling we’re expected. I’m starting to feel like this is... a test. Although what kind of test, I’m not sure. One thing that’s certain is those zombies keep turning up with unerring regularity; and well-tooled, for such a bunch of deviated twisted individuals. This is starting to feel like training school.” He gave a sick, twisted smile.
“Come on,” said Franco. “We’ve a long swim ahead.”
They slid into the ocean, which had grown calm now Franco’s embarrassment had disappeared, and gazed off into the darkness. They could not see the lights of NanoTek’s Black Rose Citadel HQ; but it was out there, squatting in the gloom, in the night, in the blackness... ominous, and waiting, like a giant maw for their impending arrival and a necessary feed.
The swim took an eternity. It was cold despite thermal electronic jackets, and portentously dark. The sea was filled with debris. Packets and tins, slimy boxes, skank-filled bottles. Combat K swam through filth; gradually, they absorbed the scum of The City.
During the monotony of swimming Keenan thought back, drifted back to a better life a good life an early life when everything had been... well, right. His children. Shit. Rachel and Ally. Their sweet faces. Their sweeter smiles. Giggling and clinging like loose monkeys to his arms, begging him for sweets or SLAM music or glitter shoes. And... Keenan no longer swam though an endless cess-pit of churning toxic ocean; he was back with his wife, and children, when there was still manic hot love between them and she held him round the waist and laughed at some small joke, lifting up under his arm, coming round, arms drooping over his shoulders, kissing him. He could smell her perfume. Still smell her perfume. It was powerfully erotic. And... then the image crashed down around him and he realised with a start rain was falling on the ocean in thick black droplets, probably containing oil or some other toxic contaminant.
