Biohell

by Andy Remic

  “Well, she’s a bloody buggering freak if you ask me. I just can’t be doing with these biomethological transport vehicles. Why couldn’t we travel in a tank like every other insane person? Huh? Answer me that!”

  “She saved our lives,” said Keenan. He lit a quick cigarette. Widow Maker entered his lungs and he sighed, staring at fingers gun-blackened by oil. Were they trembling? He would kill for a drink. “She got us out of that library. Smashed those GK AIs like they were toys.”

  “Ha!” said Franco, brightening. “She did that.” He frowned. “I just wish we didn’t have to crawl up her arse.”

  “It’s not her arse,” said Keenan.

  “Yeah it is,” said Franco, staring distantly into the cloud-heavy sky. “She’s biological, innit? She’s called MICHELLE. She’s a she. She has a rear pipe. We crawl up the rear pipe. A rear pipe is an arse, ergo, every time we climb inside, we’re giving her a good bumming.”

  Keenan stared hard at Franco. “I cannot believe we stem from the same biological race,” he said.

  “Ha! Listen buddy, I’ve had a lot of arse problems in my time. It’s like, God, or some dude or geezer, has given me the perfect face—” he stared hard, challenging Keenan to disagree through the cloud of cigarette smoke, “but to compensate for perfect and finely chiselled features, he has forced me to endure all manner of arse infestations.”

  “Arse infestations,” said Keenan.

  “Aye. I had that recurring fissure during Combat K training. Had to have six-needle injections straight up bam! into the anal pipe. Ouch! Then I had those bowel problems, oh how the lads laughed every time I had to stampede to the bogs. Then I was cursed with that damned alien arse virus from Ket, which haunts me even now—whenever it decides to rear its ugly turtle head! It’s like having a disease with its own artificial intelligence! When is it most inconvenient for Franco to have a shit? NOW!!! ATTACK!!! NOW!!! And then, as if to make a mere mockery of my humble existence, events transpire so’s I have to travel around inside a giant arse! Do the gods have no end to their wicked sense of humour? Do they? Huh?”

  Keenan drew on his cigarette, lips compressed, apparently lost for words.

  “Listen Keenan,” Franco puffed out his chest, on a roll, “you just haven’t been afflicted like me, right? Oh no. Is there to be no end to my arse suffering? And you shouldn’t mock, because you shouldn’t judge a man until you’ve walked in his shoes.”

  “Or shit with his arse?” said Keenan.

  “There you go again, with the jibes the jokes the mockery the put downs. I don’t laugh at your funny face—”

  “My what?”

  “Or Xakus’s frizzy hair, or Olga’s bouncing titanic obscenity of a bosom. Oh no. And I didn’t mock Pippa when she was part of the squad.” He stumbled into silence. Rubbed at his goatee. “Shit, man. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s OK.” Keenan slapped him on the back, and stamped his cigarette butt under his boot. “Pippa’s gone from my head. I have a funny feeling I’ll never see her again. I’m over her. Her disease is gone from my skull, buddy. Her face has been erased from memory.”

  “I’ll believe that one when I see it,” mumbled Franco.

  The group approached MICHELLE, and were absorbed into the war machine one by one, until only Franco stood on the greasy narrow street. Snow swirled around him, making his skin red with frost. He rubbed at his chilled nose, which was dribbling, and gave a short bitter laugh, glancing nervously at the desolation surrounding him.

  “So you think you’ll never see Pippa again? No mate.” His voice was deathly quiet. “We’ll see her again. Because she wants you, Keenan. She needs you like an orbital needs its host planet. Without you, she’ll surely die.”

  He grunted, puckering his face and clenching his arse as MICHELLE, ironically, accepted him into hers.

  ~ * ~

  Xakus piloted MICHELLE with as much stealth as a fifty foot bio-mechanical war transport could muster; MICHELLE crept, clashing and grinding through the streets, squashing only the occasional stray zombie which crossed her path. Keenan stood behind Xakus as MICHELLE’S scanners, using infrared, shifted from left to right and she halted with a clank, and a hiss of expelled gas.

  “Down there,” pointed Keenan, examining his TuffMAP™. “There should be an old warehouse, some kind of haulage depot. You see it? I’m sure the MonkeyMan has it logged.”

  “Turn left, oo oo.”

  Xakus nodded, and MICHELLE strode forward through the deserted district, huge metal boots cracking the road. They entered an area filled with massive decrepit warehouses. Many were crumbling, with shattered windows and half-destroyed roofs-. Timbers and alloy emerged from walls like exposed bones. Bricks were absent, giving the impression of gaping maws.

  “It’s derelict,” said Franco, who had crept up beside Keenan.

  “Better for us, no?”

  Franco rubbed his ginger beard. “I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t like anything.”

  “It smells fishy.”

  “No, Franco, that’s just your food pack.”

  “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with anchovies.”

  “I agree. On a pizza. But eating them from a jar? With a spoon? Franco, you’re a culinary pervert. “

  “Where do you want me to stop, Keenan?”

  Keenan peered outside. They’d reached the haulage depot’s huge gates which hung from twisted, battered hinges as large as his torso. Beyond, a tightly packed swathe of SlamTruk cabs linked to TitanTrailers spun away as far as the eye could see, their long, corrugated flanks emblazoned with a colourful logo:

  PORKY PAUPER’S FAST-FOOD BURGERS!

  GO ON, BE A PORKER!

  “It’s too quiet,” said Franco.

  “Walk her through,” instructed Keenan.

  MICHELLE eased between rows of giant wagons, many with burst tyres, buckled axles and smashed flanks. Evidence of recent battle. Franco pointed out an arc of bullet holes down one truck, and as MICHELLE moved onwards, towards the depot itself, the signs and scars of war increased. A whole row of SlamTruks had been torched and sat, blackened, melted into the concretealloy. Others had been turned over, and yet more blasted into a fusion of melted, twisted steel and alloy, charcoal and blue, melded by the phenomenal heat of rampaging detonation.

  “Someone’s been having fun,” said Keenan.

  “Boys and their toys,” observed Franco.

  “Head towards the back, around the depot building. There should be an entrance to the old SPIRAL SP1_store. If we’re lucky. And it’s not been raided.”

  “They’d need entrance codes,” said Franco. “Actually, how the hell are we gonna get in?”

  Keenan smiled, and pointed at Cam. “We’ve got a special permit,” he said.

  ~ * ~

  They stood on the flat expanse of concretealloy. A cold wind hushed over them. The oil snow had stopped, but the ground was slick with slush, treacherous, and the whole world seemed to have paused, a tableau of hellish desolation.

  Knuckles shivered, and moved to stand beside Keenan. “I want to come with you.”

  “You want a weapon, lad?”

  Knuckles glanced down at his rusted machete. “This seems a little... primitive. For those we are to face.”

  “You can’t come into battle, Knuckles. You’re...” Keenan stopped. He stared into the concentration of pain which made up the young orphan’s face.

  “Only a kid?”

  Keenan gave a nod.

  “This world has aged me. I am a man, now, I think.”

  Keenan said nothing, but moved to an almost invisible rectangle of alloy-concrete. Nearby, a huge, twenty-feet-tall TitanTrailer lay, twisted and buckled, broken almost in two. The bomb blast which destroyed the wagon must have been huge.

  “Cam? Can you get us in?”

  “I’m scanning now.” The small PopBot rotated, blue lights flickering on his casing. “The codes are standard military issue. Should take me a few minutes to hunt down entr
y signatures.”

  “OK.” Keenan lit a cigarette, and watched Olga sidling over to Franco. He pulled free his Techrim and checked the mag, then cocked the weapon and stared off over the barrage of battered trucks with their obesity-inducing logos. Franco was right. It was far too quiet.

  “Franco?”

  “Yeah boss?”

  “You got those Kekras primed?”

  Franco wrestled Olga’s hand from his hip and gave her a stinging slap. She smiled coquettishly at him and mouthed the words, my hero. He frowned. “Yeah Keenan. You expecting trouble?”

  “I can smell it,” he said, voice a whisper.

  His eyes roved across the massive open expanses of alloy-concrete. His eyes narrowed. Distantly, engines rumbled. Flashes lit the sky. Some kind of battle was being fought, and it was moving toward them, like a remote storm. Tracer lit the heavens, flashing green and purple like tiny, distant fireworks.

  “We’ve got time,” said Franco.

  Keenan nodded.

  “We’re in,” said Cam. There came a long, low buzz. Then a perfect rectangular outline of steel-concrete suddenly dropped into a ramp and lights sprang to life illuminating a stark metal interior. Keenan strode down the ramp, followed by Franco, Olga and Knuckles. Xakus remained outside, talking in hushed tones to MICHELLE. The giant bio-machine crooned, sitting down with a crash that put a twenty-foot crack in the yard.

  Keenan felt nervous as his boots thudded the ramp. Then the room opened revealing a stock-pile of guns, ammunitions, rockets, armour, bombs, and every other ancillary piece of equipment a soldier could ever need.

  Keenan smiled, relief etched acid on his face as Franco pushed past him and raised hands to the stark metal heavens a few feet overhead. He beamed a ginger beam, and said without a trace of mockery, “Let’s offer up a prayer to our Host! Porky Pauper! May The Plump One’s Burgers Make People Fat For Ever More! Amen!”

  Keenan grabbed a gleaming, oiled MPK and checked the mechanism. It clicked and clacked, neatly. He slotted home a magazine, aimed at a distant target, and fired off a thirty round burst. Smoke filled the chamber. The target, at the far end of the underground store, sat battered and torn and ragged under metal onslaught.

  Keenan nodded, smoke stinging his eyes. He pulled free his cigarette. Gazed over the group.

  “Let’s tool up,” he said. “And go to war.”

  ~ * ~

  They emerged from the chamber carrying canvas sacks. Franco and Knuckles had donned WarSuits, but Xakus had turned down the offer of armour. He was a scholar, an inventor, not a soldier, he said. Olga had tried on various of the larger WarSuits, but they buzzed and hissed in protest as she tried to struggle into Permatex designed for squaddies, not sumo wrestlers. Eventually, she resigned herself to several Titanium-kevlar panels, strapped to torso, arms and legs, and giving her the look of a giant, somewhat obese, insect.

  Keenan stocked up on ammunition, and carried two MPKs, one slotted, on his back, one slung against his chest. He’d found fresh stocks of 11mm ammunition for his Techrim. With this, he was happy.

  Knuckles found himself two slim Makarov pistols and a small stash of ammunition. Olga had two D5 shotguns slotted against her back, and Xakus turned down the offer of weapons with a weak smile. “I am a pacifist, at heart,” he said. “I abhor weapons of all kinds. I could never kill another man. Or... zombie.” Franco couldn’t bring himself to point out that MICHELLE was the most fearsome weapon he’d ever seen in his life; the irony knocked him out.

  However, it was Franco, as usual, who behaved like a born-again hedonist. What he carried could only be described as an orgy of weapons. He had five D5 shotguns on his back, nestling in what he proudly nicknamed his canvas shotgun quiver, alongside a Bausch & Harris Sniper Rifle with SSGK digital sights. Two MPKs crossed his chest. Four Kekra machine pistols sat on his hips. Twin belts crisscrossed his chest sporting all manner of bombs and grenades, including infamous BABEs and SPUKEs. In his utility belt were myriad military-spec knife blades: flick knives, retractable knives, throwing knives, homing knives, exploding knives, poison knives, and even a couple with pre-programmable AI function. Finally, to round off his now incredibly stocky appearance, he wore tri-goggles against his head which could be pulled down over his eyes to provide infra-red, night-sight, recording functions, green-key and TIP (target identification priority) systems which linked to the AI knives on his belt.

  Franco beamed.

  “Like a kid in a sweet shop,” drawled Keenan, lighting another cigarette. Snow swirled aimlessly in the air.

  “Hey, I wouldn’t want to get caught unprepared.”

  “That’ll never happen,” said Keenan, eyeing him up and down. “What are the goggles for?”

  “They’re not goggles. They’re TRI-SPIES. All the rage, apparently.”

  “You mean they bring on rage,” said Keenan, watching as they slipped down over Franco’s nose for the third time. “Look, the strap’s too long. Let me shorten it for you.”

  “No, it’s already on its shortest setting.”

  “And there’s me thinking you had a big head.”

  “Funny, Keenan. Amusing. Listen, it’s the bloody army! Skimping on R&D. Either that, or all those SPIRAL buggers had huge bulbous skulls.” He wrestled the goggles back onto his forehead, and switched on a beam. A red laser swept the group.

  “Don’t go pointing that where you shouldn’t,” warned Keenan, eyes tracing the skyline. The battle was definitely getting closer. Now they could hear a crump of explosions, and a muffled rattle of automatic gunfire.

  “Who’s fighting who?” said Franco.

  “Not our problem,” said Keenan. He glanced around at the rag-tag band, and gave an internal sigh. Gone were the simple days of solo infiltration. Keenan hated missions where he had to baby-sit. It made life much more difficult. “We ready? We tooled up?”

  The group nodded, and moved back towards MICHELLE.

  There, they halted.

  Beyond her, perhaps thirty metres away, squatted five evil, matt-black HTanks, engines on silent stealth mode, huge, twin-barrel guns pointing directly towards the group.

  They froze. Those guns were menacing.

  There came a click, and a hatch slid open. A SIM appeared, poking his head from the oval and levering himself up on elbows. His eyes clicked as he focused on the group. His chrome-masked face and black armour shone, as if polished by somebody with a strong right elbow, an eye for anal precision, and a terminal obsession for that very special Darth Vader gleam.

  Keenan heard Franco groan.

  “You know him?”

  “It was a while back,” said Franco, voice hoarse, eyes roving for an escape route.

  “I am Justice D,” said the SIM. “The humans are to throw down their weapons and surrender immediately. The humans are not to make a fuss.” He smiled, then. It looked wrong on his face. “Or Justice D will be forced to blow all life from frail human shit-sacks.”

  ~ * ~

  “Well, well, well,” said Franco, moving forward with hands above his head. “If it isn’t my old chum Justice D. I remember you, laddie. You need to get yourself a sense of humour injection, and pronto!” Franco turned, and started making frantic facial gestures at Keenan... who gave a single nod of understanding.

  The Justice SIM’s face was a blank chrome mask. When he spoke, his lips moved a touch out of synch with his enunciated words, as if the SIM was a product of a badly dubbed Japachinese B-movie.

  “I remember you, Franco Haggis. You helped slaughter a considerable number of my colleagues on the roof of the Razor Syndicate a while back. I remember it as if it was yesterday, loading slack broken punctured bodies into float-carts ready for reintegration in The Great Wheel.” His mechanical eyes shifted, clicking. “And you, Keenan. You were part of that extermination group.”

  “Now!” snapped Keenan.

  Keenan and Franco’s guns roared, bullets screaming at Justice D who, without any sense of human unpredictability, and with
all the imagination of a goat, was caught totally unawares. Bullets screamed off the HTank’s hull in bright streamers of sparks; Knuckles and Olga ran for the protection of the depot buildings, with Keenan and Franco covering them, weapons juddering, barrels snarling fire, faces set in grim determination as...

  As MICHELLE slowly awoke.

  She stood, towering over the HTanks. Barrels squealed on ratchets, following her up as Justice D, still poking out of his turret and mumbling anally about how he’d been so rudely interrupted in his diatribe, and how you couldn’t trust humans to listen to a decent sermon on rights and responsibilities of the SIM, dropped his jaw and leant backwards to fit the whole of MICHELLE’S form into his false mechanical vision.