Biohell

by Andy Remic

  Around the three struggling men a storm arose, swift and powerful, slamming at them with predator ferocity. And in the storm Keenan could see Pippa’s face and he realised; she was poison in his blood, in his veins, in his heart and in his soul. She always had been. Always would be. He remembered Hekkan Grail. J should have killed you then, he thought. I should have ended both our miseries. Either that, or died in that bed under cold green sunlight.

  In bitterness, he swam on.

  Franco, on the other hand, was reliving happier memories. At first he thought of Mel, of their chance meeting down to a certain lack of tax contribution, and the wonderful acceleration of sexual intimacy that followed. In truth, Franco had never had such an intimate and deep relationship (despite being married, twice) and he savoured every nuance of post-coital chatter, every syllable of ear-whispering delight, every instance of tongue-teasing exploration... right up to the point where Mel transmogrified into an eight-foot zombie deviant with dubious body odour.

  Franco blinked. “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  They stopped; were treading water. The darkness seemed infinite. Out there, they were terribly alone.

  “I was having a good ol’ daydream; then I remembered Shelly.”

  “The first wife? The one who cleaned you out?”

  Franco nodded, face bitter. Then he brightened. “Still. I look at the positives, right? At least she set me on the road to sexual exploration with all manner of deviants.” He beamed.

  “Franco, you’d find happiness in cancer, joy in a brain haemorrhage, ecstasy in instant death.”

  “Aye.” He thought. “I’m the man who put the tit into hepatitis.” He beamed. “Still! All those STDs are gone now and solved! No more itchy scratchy for this sexual athlete!”

  “Come on,” growled Keenan. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

  “Aye.”

  “And Franco?”

  “Aye?”

  “Keep your thoughts to yourself in the future, there’s a good lad.”

  ~ * ~

  “I can see it!”

  Keenan and Franco stopped, treading water and nudging at bobbing filth in the darkness. Silence reigned, except for the roll of the ocean, and the occasional slap of water. Sometimes, in the depths beneath them, a huge and bass grumbling could be heard, almost felt, like some titanic machine roaring in subdued and muffled operation. Now, however, this mechanical leviathan had receded. Even Xakus with his knowledge of The City could not explain the aural phenomenon.

  Keenan squinted. “Yes,” he breathed, feeling at once a terrible fear and apprehension, but at the same time an excitement at stretching for the climax of the mission. Would Xakus decode the SinScript and decipher why the scourge of invading junks desired Galhari? Would Mel change back to human and be fit and healthy, and ready to marry her beloved Franco? And would NanoTek own up to having a hand in the terrible deformations caused by their deviated unsafe biomod technology?

  From their ocean platter, NanoTek HQ, the Black Rose Citadel, was ominous indeed. Xakus had said it was an island, but had not emphasised its sheer scale.

  The Citadel was a fortress island, a vast, sheer, black-walled monstrosity that reared high and impenetrable and covered the twenty-square-kilometre island in its rocky entirety. In the gloom, the massive slick walls gleamed, gloss, solid, smooth, without window or hand-hold or any possible means of ascent.

  “How can we climb that?” said Franco, in awe.

  “They have gates, right? A means of entry? Up on the freeway bridge?”

  Xakus smiled weakly. “Yes, there are bridge connections to the mainland, but these retract into the body of The Citadel leaving nothing but a smooth and impassable wall. However, this rarely happens. I assumed these bridges would be open, but looking now,” Xakus glanced back over his shoulder, then tracked across the dark ocean, “it would appear everything has been shut down. They’ve closed everything. NanoTek has retreated into its bombproof shell.”

  “We need an air infiltration, then,” said Franco.

  Xakus shook his head. He was shivering, and his teeth chattered despite electronic thermal aid. “No. The shell analogy was a good one; the whole place is built to withstand aircraft, bombs, nukes, the lot. It would take serious industrial weaponry to carve a hole in NanoTek.”

  “Like an IMS?” Franco beamed, waving the Industrial Molecule Stripper around dangerously; the two men ducked.

  “No,” snapped Xakus. “They thought of that, also. The walls are covered in a type of sub-atomic electronic mesh; it can absorb an IMS beam and redistribute to source.”

  “You mean it bounces it back on the user?”

  Xakus nodded. “Yes. Very effective.”

  “Are you sure?” Franco was scowling.

  Xakus gestured at the distant citadel. “Try it. Even from this distance, it will work.”

  Franco stared at the Black Rose HQ. Finally, he said, “No.”

  “Good choice. The only way I can think of gaining entry is beneath the ocean. The HQ descends for two or three kilometres, although my clearance never allowed such immersion. Down there, beneath the black, there are long flowing sea-corridors, hubs, OctoStrands and VertClicks. There’s a city down there, gentlemen; a city dedicated to technology. A world dedicated to the human upgrade.” He smiled, his face the mask of the sardonic, and tinged by the twitch of the insane.

  “The GreenSource Mainframe is down there?” said Franco.

  “Right at the bottom.” Xakus nodded.

  “And Mel! Let’s not forget Mel!”

  “Who could forget Mel?” said Keenan.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Franco was peering up. Keenan squinted, following the ginger squaddie’s gaze. From the core of NanoTek HQ a tiny filament, a silver strand, wavered off up through bunch-fist clouds of iron and carbon; it undulated gently, describing a sine wave, then disappeared into a seeming infinity where, if one concentrated hard enough, at strand’s end a tiny sparkle glittered like a star.

  “It’s a SPIRAL port,” said Xakus.

  “That’s impossible!” snorted Franco.

  “Is it?”

  “What? Here? In NanoTek?”

  “They’re the richest conglomerate in the Quad-Gal,” said Xakus. “The glittering thing at the summit, what you probably think looks like a star, that’s the SPIRAL EYE, the bit that fires ships up near LS. Further down, but dark so you can’t see it, is the dock itself; only NanoTek have gone one step further, and another umbilical connects the dock directly to the HQ.”

  “How big is this dock?” asked Franco, squinting.

  “Big, Franco. Very big. Plush. Like an opulent city, in fact, and reserved purely for the admiralty of NanoTek. Probably weighs in at a million tonnes. It’s suspended using AGE anti-gravity engines, the most powerful engines ever built. By NanoTek, of course.”

  “So, that there little silvery wormy thing, people slide up and down it?”

  “Sort of. Just think of it like an express elevator. From the space station to the HQ passing a thousand different levels. Only, it’s a very fast lift, capable of taking not just people, but cargo, freight—weight and mass matter not. Using a by-link to the AGE engines, they can drop a million tonne Shuttle down one of those lines.”

  Franco nodded, watching the wavering filament strand which described a faint sine wave through the thunderous, storm-filled heavens. “The wonders of modern technology,” he snorted, and sulked, thinking of what modern technology had done to his Melanie.

  Keenan extracted his PAD. “Cam, do you copy?”

  “I’ve got you, Keenan. Gods, did you guys see that horrible display of urban terrorism a few hours ago?”

  “Urban terrorism?”

  “Some fanatical bastards blew the connecting freeway to NanoTek’s HQ! NanoTek are in real panic! A real big zombie army has gathered, a warhost on the march towards NanoTek’s HQ— and now NanoTek think the zombies have got hold of nukes, or something, and destroyed the main connectiv
e. They’ve closed the Citadel tighter than a bank vault of politician’s porno photos. Your path in would have been straightforward; now, it’s been compromised by whoever blew that freeway. We’ll have to improvise, gentlemen. I’ll be with you in ten. Don’t move. Out.”

  The PAD went dead. Keenan glanced sideways at Franco.

  Franco whistled softly.

  “You hear that?” Keenan said.

  “Hey! See! It was those pesky urban terrorists that blew the freeway! Nothing to do with me, lad!”

  “Nothing to do with...” Keenan’s eyes were wide.

  “It must have been one of those, y’know, coincidence thingums. The urban terrorists just so happened to strike at the freeway at the same time I had my unfortunate accident with the Industrial Molecule Stripper.” Franco smiled. It was a wide smile in a flat face devoid of true understanding.

  “What’s it like? Being you?”

  “It’s great, mate. Thanks for asking.”

  Cam arrived, as promised, ten minutes later, skimming low over the choppy ocean. He circled them, sensors scanning jagged horizons, then dropped low to hover beside Keenan’s head. Something trailed from Cam’s shell, held in tiny metal grippers. It looked like oily metal rope.

  “It’s been a long, hard slog,” said Cam heroically.

  “You find a way in?”

  “Ye-eessss, sort of.”

  “Meaning?”

  ‘“Tis a route fringed with peril and danger.”

  “Have you been sniffing hot oil again?”

  “Listen, when a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450, with integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and Put Down™ War Technology gets on a job integral to the success of a Combat K mission, he does not sniff hot oil. OK? Now, this is the plan.”

  Cam explained the plan.

  Keenan and Franco stared hard at the little Pop-Bot.

  Finally, a few moments after Cam had finished, Franco snorted. “That’s insane,” he said.

  “Fine words coming from a frizzy ginger midget with an addiction to rainbow pills!”

  “Hey, less of the frizzy. I shave it off now.”

  “What do you think, Keenan?”

  Keenan, treading water, and shivering violently despite his WarSuit and thermal-tek, was rubbing at his chin. His eyes gleamed. “Seems we have little choice if we want to get inside. Are you sure it will work?”

  “Aye, Keenan. I’ve been analysing and hypothesising since the terrible hooligan destruction of the freeway put a new challenge before me. I admit, a submarine would be preferable, especially one of those new HunterShark K12 models with aero-flux turbo-fans and Mercedes quad-impellers; but we ain’t got one.”

  Keenan looked at Xakus. “You can do this? Including the bit with Cam?”

  Xakus nodded, eyes weary. “I have the technical ability, once the merge takes place, but it’s... highly dangerous. For both me and Cam. Joining with an AI always is.”

  Keenan nodded, accepting the danger.

  “How will we breathe?” said Franco.

  “These.” Cam ejected three tiny silver globes. “Oxyjets, with a concentrate of titrapsyche-oxygen. “Just keep one in your mouth whilst submerged. I stole them. Before the Black Rose Citadel closed down and I had to cut a PopBot sized hole to escape.”

  Franco nodded, and popped the long silver pill into his mouth. The three men took hold of the thick rope attached to Cam’s shell.

  “So, we going down?” Franco’s eyes gleamed.

  Keenan pointed at him. “Don’t fucking start!”

  “I was just...”

  “No, Franco!” Keenan inserted his Oxyjet. It gleamed, entwined with his teeth. Against the lapping dark ocean Keenan’s eyes were pools of poisoned mercury. Focus hijacked his face. His concentration was total. “Cam. Let’s do it.”

  “Yeah boss.”

  Cam plunged beneath the ocean; there was a surge of bubbles and frothing water, and the three men tensed, preparing themselves as the rope uncoiled with a hiss.

  Suddenly, they were dragged violently under, and down down towards a cold and bottomless pit.

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 14

  BLACK ROSE CITADEL

  Cam sped, spiralling into the depths trailing bubbles. Towed, like fluttering ragdolls, Keenan, Franco and Xakus hung on for life. They descended into ink black. Above, any still-visible lights were immediately extinguished. And it got very, very cold.

  Keenan and Franco’s WarSuits instigated extra thermal settings, and even Xakus’s thermal electronic jacket clicked and buzzed. But as they went deeper, and the world got colder, so heat circuits started to fail and the three men began a rapid descent towards the beckoning door of death...

  Cam halted, bubbles spurting from his casing, and the three men floated down to stand on a huge globe. Squinting through blackness, they saw spidery arms, like rubber tubes, disappearing off into the gloom.

  “We can use this as an EntryShell,” said Cam, his electronic voice carrying weirdly to warble through the ocean. Other than his squeak, the world was filled with an oppressive, heavy silence. As if the three men slept under a very great weight.

  “What—is—this?” bubbled Franco, uncomfortably.

  “A coolant system. Xakus, are you ready? To do what we... discussed?”

  Xakus nodded, boots planted on the globe. Cam moved towards him, bubbles hissing in a burst stream. He bobbed by Xakus’s head. Two tiny filaments drifted from his black case. Xakus took the filaments, placed them against his skull... and shuddered as they flowed through skin, bone, and into his brain to merge with his prefrontal cortex and hypothalamus. Xakus’s eyes closed.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “There is a lot of pain.”

  “For me also. You must blank the pain. It will interfere with our cortex bond.”

  “Yes.”

  “You must show me the NanoTek organic codes. Then I will sneak us through the walls of the EntryShell.”

  “Yes.”

  Xakus concentrated. Cam watched the spirals, memorising billions of patterns, swirls, colours, sounds, experiences; they all mashed and merged, to form a Whole and the Whole was a password. Cam formatted a section of his own brain, and optimised it to match the brain of the human organism to which he was joined. Then, he took the data and shuffled it into memory slots and riffled it at speed; he then cross-matched more data with Xakus. It had to be perfect. He would only get one shot at this illegal and highly treacherous entry attempt...

  If he got it wrong, it would erase his mind.

  “You still OK?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe how you feel?”

  “Light-headed. Weak. Cold.”

  “No pains in your spine?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I have the password. Wait.”

  Cam spun, still connected directly to Xakus’s brain. His voice wobbled through the ocean. “Keenan. Franco. Focus. Hold Xakus. We’re going in. Be. Warned. It. Will. Be. Wild. Inside.”

  The two members of Combat K took hold of Xakus, and suddenly all three men and Cam sank through the black globe, as if absorbed into quicksand, or through an incredibly sticky, black rubber-gel. Keenan caught a last glimpse of the oppressive ocean and the wavering, rubbery tentacles as he was accessed by NanoTek and allowed through their esoteric organic password system. Organically entered. Merged. Genetically accepted. Mechanically decrypted. Given. Access. Entry. Inside.

  Everything went black.

  Keenan felt movement, then a sudden insanity of pressure, as if being smashed by the wall of a tidal wave... and he was gone and lost and slammed, flowing through thick black gunk and Franco and Xakus and Cam were all torn away and smashed away and gone as Keenan was buffeted and forced into a long dive through a horizontally pressured cooling system. A roaring filled his head. Pressure waves slapped him, sending pain coruscating through every atom. His eyes squeezed shut, but h
is head was full of pain with intense pressure, and Keenan sped along a winding, twisting route of tubing until he was ejected, arms and legs kicking, eyes trying to blink free gunk, through a waterfall of pressure-release and down a long trailing fall towards a deep oily basin. He fell for a long time through cold air, peppered by gunk spray, blinded, and hit the surface with a splash. He went under. He sank, deep, then with a snarl of anger he kicked out, kicked up, struggling and forcing his way past a deep centrifugal suction and up to the edge of what felt like cold hard stone. Keenan hoisted himself up, and slapped down onto the surface of the walkway, shivering. He spat out the Oxyjet and lay, panting, wheezing, head full of stars, blood full of adrenalin, head full of confusion.