Biohell

by Andy Remic

  The first time he’d caught up with her, asleep in a sleazy, damp, rat-infested hotel on the decadent mining planet of Mistral. As he coolly aimed his silenced pistol at Pippa’s sleeping body, revellers in the street outside disturbed the peace and she was instantly awake, Keenan kicked backwards by a stunning fast blow, and Pippa’s athletic figure gone from the three storey window. Keenan fired off five shots at her dodging, fleeing figure in the freeze-cool night, but was hindered by the dark of the zero moon planet, the pounding rain, and the flush of blood in his eyes from a narrow cut across his forehead. It was only then he had realised Pippa had slash-razors in her boots. His mood descended into fury, and a brooding oblivion.

  The second instance had been a chance encounter as he followed clues to her whereabouts on the busy, hedonistic pleasure planet of Tantalus IV. Tantalus IV—or the Theme Planet—was an entire world dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, an entire planet dedicated to enjoyment, fun and hedonism. The Theme Planet incorporated the very latest in high-tech rides, new drugs, sexual exploration and virtual stellar experiences. Ever wanted to be inside a star when it’s born? Ever wanted to journey through a black hole? Ever wanted to ride on the backs of loveless and technically dead Stellar Dragons? Well baby, now you can...

  Keenan hated the place, filled as it was with pleasure rides such as INSANE, MOTHERLODE, MONSTER MASH and BUBBLE GUTS. The marketing motto ran:

  THEME PLANET!

  it’s better than drugs!

  it’s better than sex!

  it’s fun it’s fast it’s slick it’s neat...

  if you haven’t been sick yet you soon will be.

  And it was right. Keenan was sick—but not from the ‘enjoyable’ adrenaline junky rides; no. Just from the cacophony of noise and bustle and charging screaming teenagers—screemagers. Keenan had always thought he discovered his personal hell on the overcrowded industrial compact of The City; however, he had been wrong. Watching thousands of squealing, over-excited, caffeine-riddled adolescents covered in popcorn, candyfloss and puke, push and jostle their way around sunny walkways littered with half-eaten hotdogs and the odd discarded teddy-bear—on a planetary scale—filled him with a loathing for organic life that went far beyond Cosmic Joke.

  As on any planet, Tantalus IV suffered from an underworld of criminal activity. Contacting the dreg-heads in command Keenan had bought information on inbound Shuttles, which in turn had led him to The Green Zone—or Tranquil Park. It seemed the parents of screaming, jostling kids needed a place to relax. The Green Zone was filled with flowers and trees and shrubs, gondola rides on calm waterways, soaring cable-car rides through snowbound peaks. The architecture was ancient alien stone, spires and towers and curving paved walkways ascending gentle hills to blue-stone castles and orange towers. The rides were rides dedicated to relaxation; immersion games of gentle pursuit or carefree, lulling, tantric sex.

  Stepping from the delivery zeppelin, and watching idly as this huge helium-filled vehicle soared away in an eerie, looming silence, Keenan had wandered down to the gardens and a map which said: YOU ARE HERE, and spread out a myriad of attractions before him across one thousand square kilometres of chill time baby.

  Checking into a local hotel, Keenan had headed for the bar, dropped his pack at his feet, lifted his hand to call the barman and froze. To his right, in a curved leather chair, a small PAD computer on her knee, sat Pippa; clothed in a long floral-pattern dress, her dark shoulder-length hair held back with blue clips, she looked fresh-faced, eyes sparkling, stunningly beautiful. Keenan’s breath caught in his throat. He was pole-axed by her femininity. Stunned by her womanhood. He remembered kissing those sensuous lips. Remembered tracing erotic lines through the sweat on her flank. Remembered her dulcet tones tongue-whispering tickles in his ear... as she drew a matt Makarov from a thigh-holster and opened fire on him—

  Keenan dived over the bar, Techrim in his fist. He returned fire, but she was gone. Like a ghost. A terrible, fleeting angel.

  “You spill her drink, mate?” asked the cowering barman with a toothless but wary grin.

  Growling, Keenan had sprinted after her... but the hotel lay in heavily wooded grounds. He searched for an hour before he found a trace of her passing; and by the time he reached the Shuttle Docks Pippa had already fled the planet.

  The third time Keenan had contact with Pippa, it wasn’t he who found her—but the other way round.

  Hekkan Grail.

  He shivered.

  A strange, improbable world. A world of contrasts, of opposites, of salted wine, sweet main courses and bitter desserts. Of women with penis extensions, and men with triple vaginas. It was a place of acquired taste. And, on a fast-cruise across an endless warm green ocean, snow tumbling from cold-sun skies, Keenan’s deck apartment—with a cloth shield roof—allowed him to watch the falling snow diffused with sunlight. Even at night.

  When he had woken, in the darkness, sun and snow piercing fingers high above him through the black, the cold barrel against his head had sent a shiver reverberating down his locked spine.

  The figure, a black outline in the dark, retreated a little. There came a hiss of breath.

  “Pippa?” said Keenan, realising the game was now, ultimately, over. Within a few seconds he would be dead meat... for Pippa was a killer, and she’d pre-empted his hunt. She found him. “Shit.” He had smiled in the darkness. A stray beam of green-sun cut a shaft across the room, for an instant illuminating Pippa’s eyes. Then it was gone.

  “I warned you not to follow me, Kee.”

  “But you knew I would.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill them.”

  Keenan’s humour left him. Anger flared. “But you did. And there’s no forgiving that.”

  “Why won’t you leave me alone? I’m sick of looking over my shoulder. Sick of being frightened.”

  “There’s only one way you’re going to stop me.”

  Her voice, when she replied, was dangerously low. “Yeah, Kee. I know that.”

  Keenan had tensed, waiting for the shot...

  Which did not come. And then he realised; Pippa was crying. Hot tears coursed her cheeks. Her gun wavered. And he knew; knew if he drew out his Techrim he could take her. Blow her damned head clean off. End this scourge on his existence; on his past. And on his future.

  But he did not. He could not.

  Pippa had backed from the room; was gone.

  Keenan had slumped back to his bed, and covered his face with his hands. He realised he, too, was crying and he hated himself for it. Why didn’t you avenge us, daddy? asked Rachel in his dreams. Why didn’t you kill the bad lady?

  Keenan awoke scowling. He coughed, and rubbed at his eyes as he orientated on his surroundings. MICHELLE. Mission. Shit. “Can I smoke?” he asked, voice a growl.

  “In here?” said Xakus, turning and raising a white eyebrow. Keenan stared into deep brown eyes.

  “Yeah. In here. I’m feeling... a need.”

  “Would you like somebody smoking inside your belly?”

  “Good point, but it doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Let me put it this way, Mr Keenan. Have you ever seen a fifty-foot enraged bio-mechanical war machine rampaging across a city killing indiscriminately with a huge arsenal of military grade weapons? Would you like to?”

  “A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed.”

  “Ha, a stupid question, no?” roared Franco, slapping Keenan on the back. Keenan’s head swivelled.

  “That’s rich, coming from the resident Housewives’ Choice.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Keenan gave a wide smile, and nodded past Franco, to where Olga sat, her huge frame squeezed into the—seemingly—tiny chair. Olga’s eyes were wide and filled with pure puppy-love. Her gaze was locked by chains of steel to Franco.

  Franco grinned weakly. Olga lifted a hand and gave a delicate wave.

  “Have you noticed a certain lop-sidedness to her smile?” said Keenan.

&
nbsp; “It’s the three missing teeth,” said Franco, through his own, which were gritted tight in a rictus grimace that would have impressed Death’s dentist. “Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to get out of this situation with my dignity.”

  “I’m gonna have to agree with you on that one,” said Keenan. He pulled free a home-rolled “Widow Maker. Met Xakus’s eyes. Cursed. Stowed the weed away. At the back of his skull, his recurring headache started to nag again. He rubbed the back of his head, wincing.

  “At the next junction, turn left. Oo oo.”

  “It’ll be asking for a banana next,” hissed Keenan.

  Olga shuffled towards Franco, and sat beside him. She placed a hand on his knee. Around them, a distant clanging and clanking and clashing of gears were the only noises to intrude in this comfortable, almost serene, hiatus in a world of violence.

  “A. Haha. Ha.” Franco’s eyes betrayed his discomfort.

  “Olga would like to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Saving Olga’s life!” She beamed. Squeezed his knee a little harder. And with a little more... urgency.

  “Um. What? Back there with the zombies? When you got, shot? Ahh, ‘twas nothing. Honest.” He eyed her like he would a particularly manky cat. “Um. You can let go of my knee now.”

  “That bullet enter my flesh, and I say to myself, ‘Olga girl, this is it! Ze zombies, they will feast on your brains! They will gorge zemselves on your generous rump!’ Yes. Until my hero, my little ginger Franco, he came to ze rescue.”

  “Actually,” said Franco, “technically, it was Keenan who rescued you.”

  “Fuck off,” came Keenan’s growl.

  “Come on Keenan, help me out here!”

  “You started this,” said Keenan, looking suddenly evil in the glow of the bio-mechanical unit’s cockpit, “so you can damn well finish it.”

  “That’s hardly brotherly.”

  “I ain’t your brother.”

  “You call me bro’, sometimes, when we’re in the shit.” Olga’s hand had moved up to Franco’s thigh.

  “Yeah well, that’s because we’re in the shit. This is different. This is your wayward stupidity at play again. You summoned Olga’s affections, and you can deal with the consequences.”

  “Hey, I was only trying to sniff out some drugs! I was just, y’know, minding my own business! Like a good boy! I’m always a good boy! You know that Keenan! Come on man, it was the drugs I tell ye! It’s not like me to go looking for women in odd and strange-smelling places!”

  “Oh yeah? Well,” said Keenan, smiling broadly, “you certainly gave her an addiction. Looks like you’re going to have to satisfy it.” With that, he moved away, over to Knuckles who had his eyes fixed rigidly on the screen showing the brutal exterior of this vast inner-city world—in all its desperation and accelerating decrepitude. Knuckles sat, open awe tattooed on his face.

  “You OK lad?”

  “Yeah, Keenan.” He shivered. “Sorry. Felt like somebody walked over my grave.”

  “Happens to me every day,” said Keenan, with a hint of bitterness. In his mind flickered the images of his little girls. Dead and gone, he told himself. Dead and buried.

  “I thought I was dead back there.” Knuckles was clasping his knees.

  “It was a tough call,” said Keenan, remembering the three GK AIs, and Nyx in particular. It had seemed to him, at the time, that there was something personal in the attack; a sense of revenge. But how could that be? Keenan had never before met the AIs. “Shit. Another puzzle.” He shrugged away the concept, and patted Knuckles’s shoulder. “Listen, you did well, lad. Really well. That idea with the fire extinguisher—genius. You might make the army one day.”

  Knuckles looked horrified. “Why on earth would I want to join the army? I have everything I need right here... in The City.”

  Keenan said nothing. A cynical part of him wanted to point out that The City, at least for the foreseeable future, was doomed. It was a ransacked shell. A desecrated temple. A biohell. Ground under the boots of a pirated, hacked, cracked and mutated biomod culture hell-bent on its own vain physical improvement—and instead, finding only a mutated version of hell inhabited centre-stage by the very people who sought to abuse their own organics at a genetic level. However, to point this out to Knuckles would be like kicking a kitten. Despite his streetwise rough tough image, Keenan could see, deep down under the young boy’s onion-layers of panel-beaten hardness, ingrained cynicism and enforced maturity, he was still a ten-year-old boy, a ten-year-old orphan, lonely, weak, and in need of the simplicity of love and affection all children required. Keenan smiled grimly. And, in fact, exactly what he himself craved.

  They sat for a while in comfortable silence, with only the grunting of Franco and Olga’s locked stalemate interrupting the hum and buzz, the distant clanking, of MICHELLE’S stomping advance across The City.

  “Can I ask you something?” said Keenan, at last.

  “Sure, Mr Keenan.”

  “Why do they call you Knuckles?”

  A veil dropped in front of Knuckles’ face, like a blast door slamming down a split-second before detonation. His eyes hardened. His face lost its boyish charm. He said nothing, but Keenan noted his hand, straying to a small velvet bag at his waist.

  “It’s OK,” Keenan said, voice gentle. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. Maybe another time.”

  “I’m... sorry, Keenan.” Knuckles seemed to breathe again, and a red flush flooded his face. “I’m just... I, well, I lock my feelings away. In here.” He punched his breast, over his gore-stained clothing. “It’s how I survive in The City. Life has... not been kind to me. And I’m not used to sharing feelings. I’m not used to... talking to people.” He grinned, then, and rubbed at a smudge on his gloss red boot. “Not unless it’s to decode a small amount of cash from helk-fur wallets. Keenan—when we sort Mel out, turn her back into a human for Franco, decode this SinScript for the Quad-Gal military man, Steinhauer; then, then I’ll tell you.”

  “You listen a lot,” said Keenan, eyeing the boy with respect.

  “It’s part of my trade,” smiled Knuckles. “I’m a kid, yeah? Most of the time people forget I’m there. I blend in. A natural chameleon. But I’m there all the same. I listen. I understand. I’ve got a brain, and I know how to use it.”

  “You think Xakus will restore Mel to humanity?”

  Knuckles met Keenan’s gaze, and what the Combat K man saw nearly broke his heart. Knuckle gave a narrow, bloodless smile, without humour, and with—ironically—a hint of condescension. “Not this side of hell, he won’t,” Knuckles whispered.

  ~ * ~

  Keenan was jerked from his weariness when MICHELLE halted, and the muffled clanking stopped. He felt the cockpit roll nauseatingly, as the huge bio-machine settled down, and he rubbed at weary, bloodshot eyes and wondered not just what time it was, but what day it was. Time, on the permanently darkened planet of The City, seemed to have little meaning now; it had simply become a question of passage.

  Keenan stretched his back, wincing at bruises and strains which, in the heat of battle, had failed to exist. Now his body felt like a well-used punch-bag. He glanced over at Franco, who was asleep, snoring, with his head on Olga’s lap. She was stroking his shaved ginger hair, and humming a soothing lullaby to the battered, middle-aged soldier.

  “We are here,” said Professor Xakus.

  Keenan nodded, standing and prodding Franco. “Come on midget, time to move.”

  Franco sat up, glared at Olga, and gathered his pack, checking his weapons. He then glared at Keenan, his shaved head just a little tufty, his eyes filled with a distillation of anarchy. Then, finally, he glared at Xakus. “I suppose,” he said, rubbing his goatee beard, “that we have to get out of this contraption the same way we got in?”

  “You are correct,” said Xakus, eyeing the small man.

  “I just can’t believe it. MICHELLE is gonna shit us out.”

  “Yo
u’ve got it all in the wrong context,” persisted Keenan, shouldering his own pack. “This is disembarkation. It’s like getting off a train. Climbing from a chopper. Hell, you’ve been down water-chutes in a water-park before now, haven’t you?”