by Andy Remic
The disc hummed, lifting and zooming over rolling dunes. Swiftly the landscape altered, blossoming and morphing into greenery as trees suddenly burst like a fresh scented carpet beneath their feet.
“I want to see Melanie!” snarled Franco, scowling at Oz.
“As you wish.”
The disc accelerated and veered, banking, and after a few moments of incredible high speed they approached a looming city of dark, sodden stone. A cold wind arose, and rain lashed at the group on the levitating disc making all except machine shiver. Buildings slammed beneath them, and Oz slowed the disc, passing over miniaturised haystacks and muddy fields, past tiny hovels with straw roofs and cattle and pigs rooting around in timber enclosures. They approached a castle, a magnificent edifice— despite being in miniature—and it appeared deserted. On the outskirts, tiny people fled screaming, their voices squeaking and surreal as they waved minute pitchforks and sticks.
Keenan peered down. “So, are they real? Or projections? Or what?” He lifted his head, eyes connecting, staring hard at Oz.
“We grow them in VATs, a similar technology used thousands of years ago for the Slabs. Only this time we don’t breed soldiers, just little simplistic men and women, and cows and pigs and chickens. However, do not think of them as flesh and blood, like you or I. The genetic codes used here are organic vegetable-based. After all... I wouldn’t like to play at being God.” He laughed, as if enjoying a private joke.
“So we really are scaring the shit out of them?”
“Yes.” Oz nodded. “In their simple, vegetative minds. But then you might as well try scaring a carrot, or a cabbage. If you grab one, bite it in half, they taste like tomato juice.”
“You mean you’ve tried?” Keenan met Oz’s brown, glassy stare.
“Oh yes. I consider it quite a delicacy. And so amusing to see little women running around on your plate as you sprinkle them with salt and pepper.”
“You are one sick fucker.”
Oz held out his hands. “A product of humanity,” he said, voice dry with dark humour.
The disc lifted, soaring over castle walls trailing a stream of rain-water. In the wide courtyard below, lying flat on a stone slab, was Melanie, all eight feet of her mottled deviated flesh, sagging pus-filled orifices and macho, staggered jaw. Her eyes flickered open as the disc settled on the ground, and she sat up, warily, hands and feet bound by HotWire which had scorched vibrant rings like dark tattoos on her skin. She moved carefully, as one afraid of very great pain.
“Melanie!” roared Franco, leaping forward before anyone could stop him and launching himself at the eight foot genetic mutation. He charged, barrel-chested, across the cobbled courtyard and fell against her, his head pushing to nestle under her elongated neck with her small head and distended features.
“Grwwlll? Ranco! Ou Ame!”
“Of course I came! I would never leave you! We are to be married! And I’m not just some low-life dirt-box scumbag with weak moral fibre who gives up just because his girl has turned into a... turned into a... had a misfortunate accident! Reet?”
“Awww, Ranco!”
As everybody watched the reunited couple with a curious mix of sympathy, tense apprehension and sheer out and out horror, Keenan moved, he moved fast and hard, and performed that thing which he did best...
The act of violence.
Keenan rolled right, fast, away from the GK AIs, coming up behind Oz in a nanosecond and looping his wire bootlace over the man’s head, drawing it tight with one fist whilst holding the man’s head encircled in his free arm. Everybody froze. Dr Oz struggled, but Keenan tugged the cord tight and Oz gurgled, one leg kicking out spastically as blood flowed beneath the wire. He halted his movements. Keenan smiled, and patted him.
“Good boy.”
Nyx growled, lowering her head, poisonous fangs glistening with tox. Keenan eyed her over Oz’s shoulder, glad of the flesh barrier between him and certain, instant death...
“Wait.” Pippa held up her hand. Keenan watched the three GKs visibly relax. They had been about to spring, an attempt to rip him limb from limb... but that wouldn’t have saved Oz.
Keenan nodded. “Bright girl.”
“Not bright, Keenan, I’ve just seen you pull this trick before.” She lowered her eyes to Oz’s purple face. “His boot laces are TitaniumIII paracord; if he tugs any harder, he’ll decapitate you. Relax, Keenan. Don’t do anything rash. We have all the time in the world.”
Keenan’s steel biceps loosened their pressure and Oz choked, snot and saliva erupting from his nose and mouth, spilling to glisten down his chin.
Keenan leaned forward. Pressed his lips against Oz’s ear. “Listen carefully,” he said.
“Don’t kill me! You have this situation wrong!”
“I do?” Keenan gave a low, evil chuckle. “That’s funny. I thought I understood it completely.”
“No! It’s a test! This is a test for Combat K! To check you still have the old magic.”
Keenan glanced at Pippa, then across to where Franco was frantically trying to fight off an accelerating frisky monster. He licked his lips. Time had slowed into honey-treacle.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “That’s just too neat. Too easy an escape route for you, my friend.”
“Why do you think we took Melanie?” snarled Oz. “We knew Franco would come after her, and drag you with him. We knew he wouldn’t let Mel suffer... it’s in his character profile. It was a chosen pathway for Combat K.”
“Shit, and there’s me thinking I came to NanoTek to decode the junk’s SinScript. And, of course, to find out what caused the genetic fuck-up slurry on the planetside streets out there.”
“Wait!” Franco had escaped Mel’s advances, and trotted over to the group. Mel came close behind him, her eyes fixed glinting on the three GKs. She growled, tiny black hackles rising on her corrugated neck. Franco prodded Oz in the chest. “What the hell did you do to my girlfriend? Explain!”
“OK, it was an accident,” said Oz, voice wavering, hands clenched into claws as blood flowed down his neck and stained the collar of his shirt. “There’s a little boy, a bastard street-urchin called Knuckles. He mugged a woman in the street—a simple enough crime—only she wasn’t just any normal woman out shopping for shoes; no, this was Christiane Solomonsson, fresh off the SPIRAL dock shuttle and heading for a meeting with Ministers from Quad-Gal. She had her case hard-wired to her arm, but Knuckles cut through the cord and stole it. Inside was a tiny bottle of biomods. Very, very advanced biomods. The template for, shall we say, a super-soldier.”
Keenan, Pippa and Franco turned, and stared at Mel. She growled, staring right back.
“So you turned my bird into a mutated super-soldier?” snarled Franco. “You dickhead!”
“No, the biomod KJ-X elements should have remained dormant... only, when the altered, pirated biomods reacted out in The City, and everybody started to change, to deviate, then everything went wrong. Melanie became a prime deviant. PriD. One of the most powerful genetic soldiers NanoTek ever designed.” He stared at her, eyes gleaming, face twisted into... pride, despite the cord tight around his throat; an umbilical of death leading straight to Keenan’s fist.
Rain lashed the group, and distantly thunder roared. Keenan glanced up and around at the micro-climate. He shivered. He was deep under the sea, in some madman’s personal play-pit. A sandbox for the insane. Never had he felt so estranged from reality.
Franco took a threatening step forward. His head lowered. His expression dropped into the sub-zero temperatures of cold ice fury. “Oz. Change her back.”
“I cannot,” said Oz.
“Grwwlll,” growled Mel.
Franco’s eyes met Keenan’s. Keenan nodded. “Change her back. Or you will die.”
“Then you’ll have to kill me!” snapped Oz. “It’s an irreversible process! The PriDs are not designed to fluctuate at will between human and military killer... they are simple fucking machines designed to destroy all l
ife. You understand? There’s a war coming, Franco, and NanoTek will be at the forefront of military supply! We are employed to design soldiers... but nobody gave us instructions what to do with them when they finished the job. They’re not supposed to turn back.”
“Soldiers? Who for?” said Keenan.
Oz smiled. “Why. For the Quad-Gal Military. Who else?”
“I don’t believe you. QGM are an ethical outfit; they would never condone the deviation of existing human and alien species. They have compassion. They have... morals.”
Oz shrugged. “You believe what you want to believe,” he said, voice level. He licked his lips, tongue rimed in blood. “And I know what I know. I have the paperwork in my office. Signed, stamped and sealed. In triplicate.”
“What about the others?” said Franco, voice cool now, eyes hooded.
“What others?”
“The zombies, NanoTek Man. Out there on the streets. Out there in The City. The millions who are fighting and murdering and killing! What about them? What happened with the biomods? What changed them? What in the name of God went wrong?”
Oz closed his mouth, jewelled teeth giving a tiny clack. He stared back at Franco. He did not reply.
“Talk, damn you!”
Oz remained silent, his eyes moving over to Pippa and the three dormant GK AIs. Oz smiled then, an eerie, blood-shadowed expression which fired a warning shot through Keenan’s brain like a lightning bolt...
Behind Oz, Xakus appeared from a turret stairwell, his face blank, his eyes fixed on Keenan and the drama unfolding in the castle courtyard. His boots thumped cobbles and he moved forward, easily. Keenan’s eyes dropped to the MMS Xakus held; it was slender, a beautiful, curved weapon with a horizontal magazine and tiny, glowing blue lights. Keenan had only ever seen one before, and he still remembered the devastating charges it could pulse across a battlefield, destroying tanks, aircraft, pigs, armoured crawlers, anything that got in its way. It was deeply illegal throughout Sinax.
“That’s a Military Molecule Stripper,” said Franco from the corner of his mouth.
Keenan nodded. “We thought you were dead.”
Xakus shook his head. “Merely... disabled.”
“Hey Professor, point that thing at the GKs,” said Franco, gesturing at the sculpted AIs. “Don’t be waving it near me, my beard doesn’t need that kind of industrial trim!”
“No,” said Keenan, voice gentle.
As Xakus moved forward, so the MMS came to rest aiming squarely at the Combat K men.
“Sorry Keenan. It’s a long story. Take the loop from Oz’s throat; it’s hard for him to call me off when he’s got no head.”
Franco glared at Xakus. “What? Where? When? What’s going down, man? You were here to help us! Steinhauer sent us to you Said you were to be trusted! You were going to decode the SinScript...”
“I am to be trusted.” Xakus grinned. He no longer looked weary. His eyes sparkled with energy. In fact, the harder Keenan stared, the more he realised Xakus wasn’t quite as old as he claimed... or maybe, now, he was simply showing his true agenda. “Only not by you. Now, Keenan, step away, before I turn this devastating example of military brutality on your Combat K buddies.”
Keenan tensed, and Franco glanced at him. For a split second he thought Keenan was going to cut Oz’s head free and launch into a bout of hardcore violence; so he readied himself, mentally and physically. ..
Instead, Keenan freed the loop from Oz’s throat, staining his gloves with blood. Oz turned, looked up into Keenan’s eyes, and smiled, stepping back as the three GKs surged into life and leapt forward, guns aimed at Keenan and Franco.
Again, the fickle tables had been turned.
“I’m getting damn sick of this,” muttered Franco.
“Rwwll.”
“What’s that?”
“Rwllwl rwlw.”
“Aye.”
“What happened, Xakus?” said Keenan, voice soft. “They offer you more money than Steinhauer? They offer you a big fat pension fund to bring in Combat K. Gods, when we broke our Prohibition D order we really dredged up some scum.”
“No,” said Xakus. “You misunderstand. Steinhauer sent you to me for a reason. I have not betrayed Steinhauer. In fact, we’ll let him explain it himself.”
From the same arched stairwell doorway that had disgorged Xakus stepped the stocky figure of General K. Steinhauer. He was smiling, and ran a hand through grey hair, pursed his lips, as if in thought, then rubbed at the pock-marked skin of his cheeks. He strode forward, large frame carried with power, grace, élan. He stopped several metres clear of the group, as if gauging their strength. He glanced at Dr Oz, and the two men had a moment of unspoken communication. Steinhauer smiled at Keenan.
“Well done, my lad.”
“Who you gonna bring out next, my mother?”
“You have travelled here, through this genetic mess, for a reason.”
“Which is?”
“QGM need Combat K reformed. We have a series of highly illegal, immoral and dangerous missions, and we need you to lead specialist hard-ops teams out there in the field. You are the best. Combat K’s best. Without a doubt. Your record is untarnished...”
“What about Terminus5? We nearly melted the fucking planet.”
“You did not err,” said Steinhauer, voice powerful, gaze iron. “And I admit to you, here, now, that you were exploited by a politician whose rank far exceeds mine. Nevertheless, Terminus5 is irrelevant... a bad dream.”
“Not to me it isn’t,” snarled Keenan. “My family were murdered whilst I served time for that bullshit. And now you try and tell me Combat K are the best, and you’ve got a whole series of new and exciting missions lined up. Well, fuck you Steinhauer.” He turned, glared at Pippa. “And fuck you as well, bitch.”
Pippa’s lips narrowed, but she did not respond.
“Wait, wait!” Steinhauer stepped forward, went as if to put his hand on Keenan’s shoulder, but thought better of it. “You, and Franco, working your way across The City to this place... it was a test, my lad. To check you were still the best. You’ve proved you’ve given up the alcohol, and you don’t let your family’s deaths get in the way of a mission. And Franco, he has proved he’s not as insane as he looks. Combat K are ready.”
“What about the SinScript?” Keenan’s eyes were cold, his gaze that of a desolate ice tomb. “You gonna tell me next you set up the junk’s invasion of Galhari?”
“No, that atrocity is real, unfolding, a drama we cannot stem.” Steinhauer’s voice was stern. “We will decode the SinScript in a few short moments— only the GreenSource Mainframe can do that. After Xakus failed to decode the SinScript using the CryptorBox we came to realise nothing else in Quad-Gal had the computational power to unlock the junk’s secrets. The SinScript is a device designed by a different age, an ancient people.”
“Leviathan’s people?”
Steinhauer, again, exchanged glances with Oz. Then back to Keenan. His eyes were trusting, open, honest. He smiled, like father to son, “Listen to me, Keenan. You, and Franco, and Pippa, you helped Emerald... one of the few remaining Kahirrim, a servant to an extinct GODRACE. I know it was not your intention; but you were duped, by the man known as Akeez.” He laughed. “This game, Keenan, this game is bigger than both of us. QGM, with the help of the politician Kotinevitch, has assembled the largest WarFleet ever seen across the Four Galaxies. We knew this day was coming. We knew, one way or another, in this century, or the next, or the next, that Leviathan was going to rear its ugly head. This gameboard has existed for a hundred thousand years. A million years. It is unfortunate the dice have rolled in our lifetimes.”
“To be brutal,” said Keenan, “what the hell has that to do with us?”
“You were there,” hissed Steinhauer, eyes glowing. “You saw Leviathan. You survived. And more than that; Emerald called you Dark Flames. That is more than a simple label. It means you are special, Keenan; Combat K is special. You—the three of you—hav
e part of the alien in your blood, and as such, you may see things, do things, that no other mortal can achieve. We have monitored you on your journey across The City; few humans would have survived such odds.”
“What about the junks?” said Keenan. “They are Leviathan’s army?”
“Yes. But they are weak, and old; in the SinScript are their plans for expansion. They are a hive-mind creature; each and every one linked by script. When one dies, they all suffer. When one kills, they all rejoice. They are a walking, talking, breathing bacteria. Keenan, we must stop them before they wipe out more life in the Sinax Cluster. We must halt their conquest and decode their plans.”
“I don’t like being used,” said Keenan. His eyes were bleak. He glanced right, to Pippa. “And I don’t think my... comrades... like being manipulated, as well.”