Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  They moved through ethereal gloom, along the low bank of the gently shifting mercury river. Only a few inches away, Keenan could reach out and touch the silver surface; but some primeval instinct, or maybe the traces of his alien blood, or the alien joining in his system, warned him against such foolishness. It's not mercury, said a voice in his mind. It's something else. Something alien. Something dangerous.

  As they walked, following the narrow ice trail which was, in itself, treacherous and slippery, promising a swift descent into the silver river, Keenan thought back to his... how could he quantify it? His alien integration.

  I can see Eternity, Emerald had said. I can see beyond Time. I can see the pulse of The Galaxy Soul.

  And Keenan understood. It had seemed like a simple kiss. A joining of lips, an alien kiss, so simple, so innocent. And yet, like molten hydrogen, thoughts had flowed into Keenan's brain with the simplicity of binary. Lights illuminated. In place of human thought came machine truth. A digital epiphany. The truth and the shift and the Dark Flame burning came from Emerald, the Kahirrim, an ancient alien from an ancient, once-extinct race.

  She had kissed Keenan. Flowed with him, merged with his blood and fluids. She had recognised the seed in him, the seed of the Dark Flame, the seed so desperately sought by Seed Hunters across the Quad-Galaxy...

  And for a short moment, they had been one.

  Kiss me, Emerald had said, and I will know you, understand you, I will delve your deepest desires and fears and needs, I will flow with your saliva and blood and semen, I will be a part of you and you of me, fluid, joined, together for an eternity... When Emerald possessed him, flowed with him, joined with him, merged with him, so she had left something behind, some residue of her alien self, some substance clinging to the inner walls of his organic shell that had subtly changed him.

  Emerald had taken away Keenan's humanity.

  Now, only God knew what he was. He smiled, a long grim smile. Because he certainly didn't.

  Everything was eerie, silent, filled with the silver glow of weird life under ice. It was surprisingly warm, and Keenan felt himself sweating as he moved onwards, his mind worrying about Cam, about Franco and Pippa, about the mission, the junks, everything was a swirl and he wondered, not for the first time in his life, how he managed to end up so perennially in the shit.

  "Wait," said Ed, stopping.

  "What is it?"

  "I saw something. In the silver."

  "What?"

  Ed looked up, eyes gleaming. "Treasure," he said, his tattooed face filled with a rising greed, a lust for wealth.

  "Fucking mercenaries," snarled Keenan, eyes narrowed. "You're a fucking pestilence on the world. Look at you, on your hands and knees, grubbing about in the shit looking for any scrap of gold. Where's your honour, Ed? You were Combat K, once. Not any longer. You sold out in the name of hard cash."

  "You shut up!" screamed Ed, pointing, his eyes haunted. Keenan could read ghosts flowing behind false shutters of self-denial. "You don't understand what it's like, you could never understand..."

  "Show me what you saw," said Snake, distracted for a moment, creeping towards Ed who had knelt, was reaching out towards the slow, sluggish silver.

  "Down there," said Ed, pointing, reaching forward...

  Keenan glanced up. Far down the trail, he saw the first of the Cryo Medics creeping along the path. His dark PVC-type gas-mask gleamed in the gloom, reflecting the silver of the river. He clutched a long thin machine gun, and Keenan fancied he could hear the rasping of an alien respirator...

  Ed leaned closer. There, just below the surface of the silver, they saw a glimmer of coins, a tumbling fall which rose and spun, dancing like a quick-moving eel of golden scales. Suddenly, Ed lunged forward, up to his elbows, and screamed a scream so high pitched and nauseating Keenan slapped fists over his ears as Ed pulled back his arms, where the flesh was eaten away to the bones, arms now nothing more than pitted crooked skeletal limbs. Even as he pulled free, his flesh was falling like molten wax, tumbling from his bones. Ed screamed, and screamed and screamed, staring in disbelief at this horror, this unrecognisable mutation being visited forcefully on his flesh...

  Snake stared, open-mouthed, stunned.

  Keenan slammed his fist into the back of Snake's head, a savage hard blow that dropped Snake immediately. Keenan took the D5 shotgun, and stared at Ed with pity, no longer feeling rage at this pitiful enemy, no longer suffering hatred. Keenan stared at a simple sick animal in need of quick death.

  "No," wept Ed. "I don't want to die like this!" He flapped the useless bones of his arms. Even now, the tibia and fibula were starting to deform, to soften like runny putty, and melt into drooping unrecognisable blobs of molten bone-matter -

  "I'm sorry," said Keenan, voice little more than a whisper. Four shells smashed Ed's chest, powering the small man back into the silver river. Eyes closed, Ed sank, flesh dissolving instantly from his frame so that Keenan's last glimpse was of a skeleton, splayed back, reclining, bones fast - dissolving in the powerful acid...

  Snake's head smashed up. "Keenan. The Medics are coming. Give me a gun..."

  "What, and have you shoot me in the back of the head? Get to fuck."

  "Keenan!" Snake's face was pleading, and he glanced to where Ed had disappeared. "I don't want to die, Keenan. The two of us have more chance escaping this shit if we work together."

  Keenan stared hard at Snake, then tossed him his Techrim 11mm. Snake weighed the gun thoughtfully, and ducked as bullets whined over the two men, chipping shards from the ice. Keenan and Snake returned fire, guns booming in the hollowed out glacier with incredible ferocity. Bullets howled through the grey gloom, smashing the Cryo Medic from his feet to topple into the silver river. More came, creeping along the path, and Keenan saw they had circuit boards welded to their arms and chests, and several of the soldiers - further back - carried tall back-pack tanks. Great, he thought. Flamethrowers. Just what I need to end a bad day.

  "Let's go."

  With heads down, they sprinted along the ice-slippery path, which wound to the left blocking out their pursuers. More machine gun bullets whined after them, and one deflected from the tunnel wall and skittered to a halt on the path before Keenan. He stopped, knelt, and picked up the... bullet. He grimaced, showing it to Snake.

  "They're firing hypodermic syringes," he said, head tilted to one side, analysing the short, stubby syringe. It was about the size of a 7.62mm round, so a hypodermic in miniature, with a hardened tungsten tip and an injection payload. "They have machine guns which fire syringes! How... bizarre."

  "Yeah, well they can still kill. Let's go."

  Keenan pocketed the projectile and ran, with Snake close behind. After a few minutes the path suddenly widened, and opened into a large oval ice cavern. The path rose onto a bridge, or series of many narrow ice bridges, below which the silver river opened up, disappearing into at least fifty different tunnel openings. At bridge level, each strand of silver river was followed by a new tunnel, so as Snake and Keenan breasted the ice-rise they saw fifty gawping tunnel entrances ready to accept them, to swallow them whole.

  "Which way?" snapped Snake.

  Keenan opened his mouth to reply, then felt a pulse in his chest, in his veins. Something beat in synchronisation with his heart, and for a moment, a fleeting glimpse of time, showed him a sliver of pain greater than anything his human shell had ever endured. Before his mouth could open to scream, the pain had gone, but Keenan dropped to his knees as if punched, all breath knocked out of him, squinting and wheezing under the eerie ice light.

  Snake whirled. "Have you been hit?"

  "No." Keenan wheezed. He pointed. "That tunnel."

  "You sure?"

  "Yes."

  Snake moved forward, stopped, turned and hurried back. He hoisted Keenan to his feet, his face close, and hissed, "Come on, soldier. Those bastards are not far behind..."

  Even as he spoke, they poured onto the strands of ice bridge and opened fire. Com
pact syringe bullets whined over the two Combat-K men, and they broke into a run, returning fire, bullets kicking out powdered ice slurry and punching Cryo Medics from their feet in sprays of startling crimson. "At least they bleed!" shouted Snake, laughing suddenly, leading the way. Keenan hobbled after him, feeling as if his heart had imploded, feeling an alien blood raping through his veins.

  Two of the Cryo Medics had reached the summit of interlocking bridges, and turned long slick nozzles towards the two fleeing men.

  "Fire!" screamed Snake suddenly, loosing off more panicked rounds. But he was wrong. The Medics pulled triggers, and ice burst from the weapons, a massive outpouring of ice smoke, ice shards, snow and sleet slamming out on a horizontal plane and filling the chamber, flooding towards the two Combat-K men like a mushroom of poisonous gas -

  They sprinted, into the tunnel, and were slammed in the back by the wall of ice-smoke. It felt like being hit by a brick wall, and instantly Keenan and Snake were smacked down, unable to breathe, ice in their lungs and in their eyes, blinded, incapacitated, fingers frozen solid to guns, bodies shaking with the shock of sudden impact.

  Keenan tried to speak. He could not.

  He felt the passing of the smoke and ice, and heard boots, many sets of boots, sprinting into the corridor. He heard the rasp of respirators, and felt hands on him, rolling him on to his back. The pain in his eyes dissipated enough to allow him to make out blurs, simple grey shapes, and he saw sketched the image of the gas-mask wearing Cryo Medic standing over him, rasping, hypodermic machine gun in his gloved hands. The Medic pulled free his mask, and Keenan blinked rapidly, staring up into a face that was a circuit board, or more precisely, had had many circuit boards welded to the flesh so that only the eyes showed through tiny diodes and transistors, coils of copper and flickering digital LEDs.

  The Cryo Medic seemed to grin behind his electronic mask, and his words were metallic, like that of a robot.

  "You should not have come here, Keenan, Combat K man. But we have been waiting for you, nonetheless. Waiting for centuries. Welcome to our Lair. Welcome to The Electronic Medical Institute For Integrating Human and Machine!"

  A wave of nausea and darkness slammed him.

  And Keenan remembered no more.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MADWORLD

  Pippa cowered behind her arms, waiting for the house-sized slab of masonry to engulf her... but it did not come. She slid, sparks erupting from her pack, swords and gun, as they connected with debris in the stairwell shaft... massive crunches rent the air, and glancing up, she saw the masonry had caught on an out-jutting of stone, snagging it. Then it broke free, tumbling, falling towards Mel again. Below, she heard Betezh shout and suddenly flip away, disappearing from the shaft. Pippa reached out, catching the lip of ledge and hurling her body through the opening. She hit Betezh, who had just gained his feet, in the back and they both went down like skittles amongst fires and crumbling bricks. A second later, Mel hurtled through the opening, and behind her there came a crunch and dust billowed into the chamber engulfing them, making them cough and choke and clogging nostrils with filth.

  "Come on!" snarled Betezh, and they ran under an overhang of crumbling hospital wall, out into a buckled, heaving courtyard. Even as they watched, cracks snaked along the ground and cobbles tumbled away like stone dice into a deep stench-filled crevasse.

  "There!" screamed Pippa. "The SLAM Cruiser! We've got to get onboard, it's our only hope!"

  Even as they watched, through the fire, dust, billowing smoke and mushroom clouds of exhaust fumes, the SLAM revved engines high and hard and shifted, floating, its loading ramp moving away from the gantry in a shower of sparks and crumbling stone. They ran, sprinting across the courtyard, cobbles falling from beneath their boots into deep pits of molten stone. Betezh, surprisingly, took the lead, moving damned fast for a fat man, in fact, faster than Pippa had ever seen him move.

  Betezh leapt, boots thudding the ramp. The Mk I SLAM Cruiser reared above him, like a towering black hotel, tiny yellow windows twinkling through poisonous exhaust. Pippa came next, leaping, fingers gripping the edge of the ramp and scrabbling madly for a moment, legs kicking as the wind was knocked from her. Betezh reached out, powerful hand curling around her wrist and lifting her bodily onto the ramp. He grinned at her. "Got you," he said.

  They turned.

  Mel was struggling. She'd slipped on a downfall of tumbling cobbles, her claws scratching out at rock, scoring marks on stone. Pippa watched with her heart in her throat as Mel clambered over the edge of the sudden quake-induced precipice, and sprinted like a dog, on all fours, claws gouging the earth. She pounded up the gantry, long spools of saliva drooling from twisted zombie jaws, and leapt -

  Pippa reached out towards her, both arms outstretched...

  But the SLAM Cruiser chose that moment to ignite afterburners, and leapt into the sky with a roar that shook the remains of the quake-battered hospital into a collapsing, tumbling, mushroom-engulfed oblivion. Huge walls toppled, towers screamed and rocked and fell, huge clouds of dust billowed amidst rockslides of brick and stone and steel support columns. Sheets of fire painted the underside of the clouds.

  Pippa looked into Mel's eyes, as they pulled away fast, and Mel disappeared without a sound under the tumult of cascading bricks and stone. Dust occluded her. In a roar of deafening, final collapse, Mel was gone.

  Pippa slumped back on the ramp, exhausted. Tears eased down her cheeks, scoring wide lines through settled dust.

  "Get up," said Betezh.

  "But... Mel! She's dead."

  "And if they catch us here, we'll be dead," snapped Betezh. "On your feet, soldier. Chin up. All that guff. Come on bitch, I don't want to die!"

  Pippa stood. She shouldered her pack, and withdrew her precious yukana sword. The black blade gleamed, a single molecule, frictionless, deadly. "I'm in the mood for death, now," she said. "I'm in the mood for some killing." Her cold grey eyes gleamed, like a machine.

  Betezh blanched. "Hey, don't take it out on me! Blame whoever sent the quake."

  Pippa gave a single nod, and without another word, took the lead. They moved forward, and behind them, upon some digital instruction, the ramp started to slowly lift, closing them in the belly of the SLAM.

  "Trapped," said Betezh.

  "Good," said Pippa. "Let's find the cunt who's running this show."

  "They'll kill us. Or. Even worse." Betezh shuddered. "They might operate on us!"

  "Just let them try," snarled Pippa.

  "I am Dr. Farook," said the tall man, with curly black hair and two extra arms welded into his neck. All four arms waved yukana swords, an absolute fortune in rare, antiquated blades, and Pippa crouched, watching the four blades, calculating their financial worth and seemingly ignoring her approaching, imminent doom -

  "Pippa!" hissed Betezh.

  Farook hurtled at Pippa, and she leapt with awesome speed, a blur, seeming to dance between all four blades and her yukana made a single horizontal cut, and then she was through the whirling wall of metal death and landed lightly. She turned, resting her own blade on her shoulder, smiling at Betezh through the still whirling wall of silver yukana steel.

  "But..." said Betezh.

  Doctor Farook slowed in his dervish of death, each blade faltering. One knee went down, he stumbled, and his head suddenly detached from his body. The corpse slumped to the iron deck of the SLAM Cruiser, and blood gushed out, noisily.

  Betezh gave a single nod. "You are indeed skilful."

  "No," snapped Pippa. "They are indeed inept. Why are there so many bloody doctors about? It's like A&E on a Saturday afternoon. Oh no, silly me, my mistake. All the docs would be off playing golf, then." She smiled, sardonically.

  Betezh fell into step beside her. "This is a hospital ship?"

  "Perhaps. But what I really want to know, is what the hell went on with Miller?"

  "This is one screwed up mission."

  "Yeah." Pippa gave a horizontal smile. "Tell m
e about it. It looks to me like there's so much weird mutated shit going on down here, no way in the Quad-Gal could DropBots be so deaf, dumb and blind. Which kind of hints at a few possibilities. Either the DropBots and AnalysisBots were reprogrammed or deceived in some way; improbable, as they are extremely advanced AI designed with a singular purpose. And looking at the mess of the, um, medical staff we've met, I just can't believe they'd miss this apparently global shit. Another alternative is that QGM wanted Combat-K dead, so they sent us on what we thought was a piss-easy gig, and blam, we're suddenly in the shit without the right equipment or weapons."

  "No," said Betezh, voice low. He was casting about, eyes nervous, across the myriad criss-crossings of the SLAM Cruiser's black alloy decks. Admittedly, they'd met four pockets of resistance, and admittedly, Pippa had slain all four pockets single-handedly in the blink of an eye, taking on odds that had made Betezh pale; but he was still waiting for a burst of sudden gunfire bringing a burst of sudden death. It wasn't a nice feeling. "You're wrong. I used to work internal affairs."

  "Oh yeah. I'd forgot." Pippa gave a nasty smile.

  "If Steinhauer or QGM wanted you dead, there are easier ways of killing you off. After all, you've got spinal logic cubes; he can pull the plug at any moment. I've got a more viable proposition."

  "Which is?"

  "Steinhauer suspected foul play down here. If he'd really thought it was that simple, he wouldn't have sent you, Franco and Keenan in command of your own squads. How many elite soldiers do you need to gather rock samples? So, he's got a nagging suspicion of junk foul-play down here, sends us down, knows we'll kick up the shit and start hunting down the problem... especially without the permission of superiors. When Miller was assigned, Steinhauer was shitting bricks. And it's looking to me like Miller was a plant; I've no idea who he was working for, but he wanted to stop this mission good."

  "Hmm. I don't know. How could Steinhauer be sure something would happen down here?"