by Andy Remic
“Tea, five sugars?”
“Just how I like it.” Franco struggled into a sitting position, took the brew and slurped tea down his WarSuit. “Ahh,” he said. “Ahh. Ahhhh. That’s good, that is. Ahhhh!”
Xakus appeared at the door, sipping his own coffee. “Look at us. We’re all exhausted. Fit to drop.”
“No rest for the wicked,” said Keenan, voice low. “So many lives depend on it.”
“You really believe you can stop this thing?”
“If there’s a way,” said Keenan. “I’ll find it. I don’t believe these zombies are the living dead; I believe whatever changed them can change them back. Something stinks here, Xakus, and I want to help clean up the mess.”
“You’re quite a humanitarian, for a soldier.”
“He was never always that way,” grinned Franco conversationally.
“Just because I can kill, it doesn’t mean I like to. There was an incident, once, many moons ago. I torched a whole host of deviant bastards in Lakanek Prison. They were paedophiles, sex offenders, the abusers of babies. I burned them and they squirmed, squealing like pigs in napalm. At the time, I was filled with hatred. So much anger it consumed me.” He sighed. “But as I get older, I realise violence and death are not always the right way. There are alternatives.”
Franco snorted, tea coming out of his nostrils. “What? What’s this? Keenan the do-gooder? Keenan the fucking cardigan salesman? Those paedophiles deserved to die. They murdered children! Why should they continue to exist? Hell pal, soon you’ll be wearing hand-knitted jumpers and organising jumble sales! You’ll be protesting for the release of scumbag murderers just because they’ve had a few human rights constrained. Ha! Get to fuck and suck hard on it.”
“Calm down.” Keenan was smiling. He punched Franco on the arm, playfully, and the rotund soldier yelped. “All I’m saying is this entire situation sits bad with me. Once, I would have torched the place. The entire planet! Now... we may have a different option.”
“I don’t think you understand what you’re up against.” Xakus sat across from Franco, holding his coffee, and Keenan settled down cross-legged.
“Have we got time for this? What about the Sin-Script?”
“I’ve set cores running to decode algorithms. It may take some time.” He eyed Keenan coolly, and not for the first time did Keenan sense the iron in this old professor. Despite age, this man was not a weak-willed individual. He was a man to walk the mountains with. Keenan believed in his judgement: he was rarely wrong.
“Tell me about NanoTek, and Dr Oz.”
“Dr Oz is slim, delicate, small. Nothing to look at. Nothing at all. He’s bald, face a bit bland, you know, nondescript. In a crowd he would never stand out. He always wears a simple glass suit. It’s only when he smiles that his face changes; he has little pointed teeth made of some kind of alien jewels. They say he has never taken his own biomods, but I think that’s an urban myth. How could somebody so powerful keep away from self improvement? Why invent them in the first place?”
“Ouch!” Franco glared at Cam. “That bloody hurt that bloody did. Watch what you’re poking! I don’t like being poked like that! A gentleman,” he smiled haughtily, “should not be poked.”
“If sir would like to remove his own dormant biowire?”
“OK, OK, you gotta point. Just... stop hurting me! I hurt enough already, what with Mel being kidnapped an’ all. And it hurts!”
“What about this Black Rose Citadel? NanoTek’s HQ? Sounds hard to infiltrate. Sounds like maybe we should call in Steinhauer, get him to bring his entire QG army down here and forge us a passage. Then we’d have some fun.”
“The HQ is an island. About three hundred klicks north of here. Anti-aircraft, anti-nuke, anti-everything. It looks like what it is, a military citadel; huge and black and foreboding. The roof is steeply pointed, the whole thing coated with biowire and veinthreads. Nothing living’s going to infiltrate that way. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg; the citadel extends down, down beneath the ocean for perhaps three or four kilometres. There are sea-corridors created from plasma, hubs with Octo-strands and VertClicks, like cylinders, dropping deep beneath the ocean. In the depths they have the GreenSource Mainframe, the hub of NanoTek’s knowledge, technology... and wealth.”
“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this Green-Source Mainframe,” said Keenan, voice slow, caged, intuitive.
“And you’d be right to. Rumour suggests it’s alive—not just a collection of processors, or even AI; but a real, organic, sentient machine. Rumour has it the GreenSource came from somewhere else. Made NanoTek what it is today.”
“But you’ve never seen it?”
“Nobody has seen it,” said Xakus, shaking his head.
“So it may not exist?”
“A possibility. You thinking of a distributed network core?”
“I’m thinking a single target is too neat. Also too risky for a company like NanoTek. Still, we’ll find out soon enough. Have you got co-ordinates for the island?”
“Yes. It’s no great secret. Gaining access is what’s going to cause the problem.”
“I think we’ll go for the straightforward approach.”
Franco grinned. “You mean knock on the front door?”
“Seems like the best way to conquer a citadel to me.”
“Ouch!”
“Sorry!”
“Damn tennis ball!”
“I said sorry, Franco.”
Xakus smiled, and jumped down from the Apache. “I’d better go and check on the decryption.” Keenan nodded, and watched Xakus crunch off through black snow.
“What do you think?” said Franco.
“I like him. But I don’t trust him.”
“Me neither. There’s something too neat. And we was sent to him by Steinhauer. That’s not a great recommendation, my friend. Steinhauer has played us like prawns before.”
“Pawns.”
“Whatever.”
“And you said “we was”. Grammatically incorrect.”
“Bugger off!”
“One last thing, Franco.”
“Yeah mate?”
“Thanks for saving my life back there.”
“‘Twas nothing. I know you’d do the same thing for me.”
“Always, brother.”
~ * ~
Franco jumped from the Apache and rolled his shoulders. “Ahh!” he said. “Ahh! My flesh feels as good as new!” He turned and stared at Cam. “Good job scrotum ball!”
“A thank you would be nice.”
“Hey, don’t push your luck.”
“I just spent an hour picking dangerous weevils from your flesh.”
“Yeah but, like, that’s your job. Ain’t it?”
“Still, manners cost nothing.”
“I agree,” beamed Franco. “It’s about time you recognised your own deficit.”
Leaving Cam hissing to himself, Franco strode through the snow to where Keenan leant over the edge of the skyscraper, enjoying a cigarette and gazing into the vastness below. “What you doing, bro’?”
Then he saw the PAD in Keenan’s hands, and he raised his eyebrows. “You sending?”
“Aye.” Keenan nodded.
“What you sending?”
“An open Panic Burst. On the old Combat K frequencies. I’ve also sent one on Fortune’s private number; if he still lives. I’ve not heard from him for a few years.”
Fortune was a rogue mercenary AI wanted by the Quad-Gal authorities. Once hunted, Fortune travelled from hiding place to hiding place within the Sinax Cluster. Occasionally, and for the right fee, Fortune would act as NMH Bridge—Navigator, Monitor and Hacker. This gave whoever paid the right fees access to the Quad-Gal Military Factory Class Database, and Fortune could sometimes get Combat K out of situations by employing his awesome technical hacking skills. He had been quiet for a long time now. Privately, Keenan thought he was dead. .
“You asking for help?”
“Y
eah.” Keenan grinned through a pall of smoke. “Any help right now would be much appreciated. That’s if there’s any Combat K guys left out in the smush.”
“Olga might...”
Keenan held up his hand. “Don’t even go there, Franco. I doubt very much she’ll manage to find that which you sent her for. But—don’t worry. If we escape this shit, I’ll make sure you two get back together for a sweet reunion.”
“That’s not what I meant,” mumbled Franco, face flushing red.
“Sure it’s not, buddy. Sure it’s not.”
Keenan shut down the PAD and checked his weapons, then his WarSuit. Franco’s was malfunctioning after his escapade with the disco zombies, but was still vaguely functional—and better than going in without any armour at all.
Cam buzzed over. “Keenan. I was thinking of journeying ahead, scouting out the land.”
“Every time you say that, we end up in the shit.”
“It’s what I’m designed to do. And in all actuality, I don’t foresee you having another contact before you reach the Black Rose Citadel.”
“On a long enough timeline, we all run out of luck.”
“Yes,” said Cam, “but you have here a fine Apache Gunship. You know your destination. No. I am quite confident you are safe; I will zip ahead, gather what intel I can for a smooth and speedy infiltration. What do you think?”
“Go on then. Just don’t get into trouble.”
“I’ll be careful,” said Cam, primly, and dropped neatly off the edge of the skyscraper.
“That little yellow chicken-shit!” snapped Franco.
“You think he’s scared? He’s our scout.”
“Yeah yeah, sure he is. Probably gone for some PopBot sex. Or something.”
“You taking your pills?”
Franco popped a green one, and crunched it. It turned his teeth a frothy green and he grinned as if in the throes of a rabid, pus-drenched fit. “Better believe it.”
From over by the power source, where Xakus worked with eyes and mind focused decoding the SinScript, there came a heavy bass whine. Both Keenan and Franco stared.
Xakus looked up.
“Something wrong?” said Keenan.
“We’re out of power.”
Franco snorted. “How can an entire power block be out of power? Don’t be ridiculous!”
Around them, a sudden swathe of blackness washed over the buildings which remained illuminated. Dark flowed like liquid. Distantly, a variety of clunks, whines and growls emerged from machinery closing down, shutting down, dying. Darkness seemed to sweep a mammoth quarter of The City.
“Impossible,” said Keenan, voice gentle, cool, eyes shining with understanding. Then, voice carefully measured, he turned and stared out over the black horizon where tiny zig-zags of purple flashed and yellow tracers streaked like strobes. “Xakus. Get your kit together.”
“Why, Keenan? I can re-route...”
“We’ve got company.”
Franco whirled, eyes straining. “Boss?”
“Get the chopper started. Now!”
Franco ran, leapt aboard the Apache and fired the engines. The rotors started to run, scything snow, and Keenan hoisted his MPK, checked the weapon, and lit a cigarette. Smoke engulfed him. Calmly, he waited.
Xakus, with kit packed, sprinted to Keenan. He handed the SinScript to the battered soldier for safe keeping, and Keenan stowed the valuable disk beneath his WarSuit. He laughed. Yeah, he thought. Until the next time.
“Have you seen anything?”
“Get in the chopper.”
They slammed, screaming through blackened skies, rotors thundering, fire flickering from exhaust ports: Three Black Tiger KAZ Gunships, howling as they sped into view and roared overhead, rotors whirling, banking in close formation as Keenan sighted down his MPK and unleashed a long, hard volley of bullets, turning, tracking the choppers as they circled, banking steeply again, their targets now identified...-
“Franco, I need that chopper!” roared Keenan. He changed mags, allowing the first heated alloy strip to tumble to the ground. It clattered brittle against concretealloy.
There came a whine, then a whump. Keenan stood, legs braced, teeth in a snarl, and unleashed another stream of bullets, watching the rocket detach from the Black Tiger and roar towards the roof... and his fragile shell.
Keenan rolled left and hit the ground hard amidst puddles of melted snow as the rocket slammed the roof thirty feet to his right—where seconds earlier Xakus had stood. A green fireball billowed, raged into the sky on a volley of erupting building chunks and severed cables. The explosion sent a wash of steam broiling over Keenan.
Keenan crawled as the Black Tiger Gunships smashed overhead, gunfire rattling. Bullets slammed Combat K’s Apache; sparks smashed a firework display.
“Come on!” cried Franco.
Keenan leapt in the Apache as Franco thrust at controls like a mad monkey. Engines screaming, they leapt into the air and Keenan grabbed the heavy mounted machine gun, an EMF5000, and buckled himself in. His head snapped round. “Xakus, strap yourself tight. We’re in the shit.”
Xakus nodded, face drawn in fear, and struggled against physics to the far wall where he locked himself to the internal buckles of the machine.
“Going down,” said Franco, who despite claiming to hate flying, was actually a pretty accomplished pilot, only superseded in skill by Pippa—although he would never admit it. Franco dropped the Apache from the summit of the skyscraper and roared towards the ground. “What’s on our tail?”
“Black Tigers. Three of them.”
“Bastard. Not the KAZ models?”
“Yeah. I think.”
The Apache roared ground-wards and behind the Black Tigers were jostled into single-file due to the narrow streets; guns roared, and Franco pulled up, cruising along in a blur a few feet above street level. Bullets raked the streets. Stray cars were caught, punctured, lifted and tossed, hammer-blows which left them squatting on destroyed suspension and curling flames. Several exploded, and Franco banked, taking an intersection and whizzing between towering skyscrapers, flashing through balls of acrid smoke.
“I can’t use the gun down here,” shouted Keenan over the flapping, smashing noise from the open door. “We’re too enclosed!”
Franco nodded. “If I rise above the streets they’ll flank us.”
“Here, we’re a sitting duck.”
Franco nodded again, slamming the chopper right down another intersection. Rotors thrummed, reflected from glass and alloy walls. In close pursuit, the lead Black Tiger growled, lurched forward, and started to gain.
Keenan grabbed Franco’s pack, pulled free a BABE grenade. He pulled the pin, shuffled to the edge of the chopper so his legs were hanging out over the flashing, stroboscopic ground. “Make a left,” he shouted.
Franco slammed them left, and as they banked Keenan squinted, tears streaming down his face in the slipstream, and hurled the BABE. There came a hiatus. Then a boom, and a blossom of purple flames. The three Black Tigers slammed through smoke. Machine guns roared, and bullets slapped along the Apache’s flank.
“Hold on!” screamed Franco, and the Apache’s nose lifted dramatically and they soared skywards, g-force pinning them in place as engines screamed and groaned and wall panels rattled. Reaching the summit of the nearest skyscraper block, Franco pulled a massively tight turn, soaring in an arc through the sky and coming around towards...
A wall of glass.
“No!” growled Keenan as they flashed towards the skyscraper, and Franco blasted an AAAM rocket. It detached, roared, and detonated a hole in the side of the skyscraper. The Apache slammed into the smoking maw and for a few seconds Keenan caught glimpses of flaming chairs and blackened desks, scorched computer terminals, internal walls and a flashing flicker of a bizarre detonated office. Another boom signified a second rocket and then they were out in the black, snow-swirling sky as Franco jiggled the Apache around...
“Get on the guns!” he scr
eamed.
The three Black Tigers were arraigned, searching for the Apache. Keenan, gripping the EMF5000 in two sweating fists, unloaded a hardcore smash of bullets that streaked across the sky on trails of fire and cordite. Bullets ripped into the first machine, spitting sparks from rotors and sending it spiralling down in a stream of billowing, blue smoke...
In the punctured cockpit, Keenan had seen flailing, panicking... zombies.
You’ve got to be kidding, he thought.