by Andy Remic
As they fell, Keenan nudged Franco and gestured to the portal. Franco peered out. They dropped, following a flowing smooth black tunnel towards the bowels beneath The City... and there, running parallel with their descent, was the same thick silvery umbilical they had witnessed from outside the Black Rose Citadel HQ.
“That lead up to the SPIRAL dock?” said Keenan.
“The Line? Yes. SPIRAL port technology is incredibly complex; if not meticulously controlled then it becomes a danger to us all. We are dropping through a hermetically sealed environment. Freefall.”
“The GreenSource Mainframe controls all this?”
“Yes.” Oz locked his gaze to Keenan. “And so much more, my little cooperative Combat K man.”
Keenan was just about to speak, but the SLAM Cruiser slowed with rapid deceleration, dunk-engines whining, as they slipped through sealant-envelopes.
And there, below them, spread the GreenSource Mainframe.
At first glance it appeared to be a giant series of towers built from crystals of deep, rich green. The base was perhaps fifty metres across, and rose in jagged leaps, ragged steps, to a single inch-wide pinnacle which connected, via a narrow circular platform, to the Line leading straight up to the distant SPIRAL dock. NanoTek’s express elevator to the stars.
The SLAM Cruiser decelerated further, and banked, and Keenan saw the Mainframe stood on an island of rough volcanic rock; to all sides there was a moat of nothingness, a desperate fall veering away and inducing instant vertigo. Deep, deep down the circular well could be seen the glow of magma, which broiled and churned in restless agony.
The SLAM Cruiser banked again, then levelled, and touched down on the platform at the tower’s base with a metallic compress of suspension. The ramp fizzed, and Oz was the first one off the vehicle, watching as GKs prodded Keenan, Franco, Pippa and Mel from their cosy intimacy in the narrow hold.
They clumped down the ramp, to stand on uneven volcanic rock. All gazed up at the sheer magnificence of the rearing green towers, topped with that silvery, spidery strand of Line. And yet— yet something strange filtered into Keenan’s mind. The image was wrong, somehow disjointed, as if the GreenSource Mainframe didn’t quite inhabit the same time frame. It seemed to jerk, and jump, in infinitesimally small steps and he turned to the others. “Do you see it?”
“See what?” barked Franco.
“The tower. Stuttering, like a badly copied vid.”
Franco stared hard at Keenan. “I think it’s you who needs a pill, good buddy.”
“Have you noticed the colour?” said Pippa, voice low.
“What about it?”
“When we visited Ket, and broke into the Inner Sanctum of The Metal Palace; we found Emerald, yes, but she seemed to be linked to a gem. Remember? Franco wanted to steal it. The tower looks like, hell, it is the same sort of thing. The same... mineral.”
Combat K observed the GreenSource Mainframe.
And felt, eerily, that it observed them back.
“You must enter the portal,” said Oz, moving up close behind Keenan. Keenan glanced back, saw the poison dripping from Nyx’s fangs, the steady hold on the yukana, and he glanced around at the other GKs with weapons trained on the unarmed and helpless Combat K soldiers. The unwilling unit reformed.
“I kind of felt you were going to say that.”
“There.” Oz pointed. There was a circular orifice, at floor level. Keenan nodded, and moved towards the organic lips. He turned, made eye contact with Franco, then with Pippa.
“I have a feeling this is where I discover the truth,” said Keenan.
“Grwl,” said Mel.
“What did she say?”
“She said that sometimes the truth is best left dead,” translated Franco.
Keenan stared hard at the ginger squaddie. “You got all that from one growl?” Franco started to moan an explanation, but Keenan held up a hand, and rubbed at his temple as his headache returned to pound him. But this time, unlike during previous occurrences, it came flooding into his skull with a vengeance, washing over him, down through his entire being like a raw riot of fire. Keenan paled, and felt like he could vomit. “It’s OK,” he managed to say, through pulsing waves of sickening nausea. “OK, Franco. Stop!”
“Good luck.” Pippa’s voice was low.
“I thought you were trying to kill us? With those bastard... things. What changed?” Keenan was breathing deeply, laboured, obviously suffering agony.
“I...” Pippa shook her head. Looked at the ground. “Shit. It doesn’t matter.”
“She trusted Oz,” said Franco. “But he stuffed her. Ain’t that right, girl? At least with us you know Uncle Franco will look after you.” He leered at her bosom.
“That’s what worries me.”
Brittle.
Chatter.
Insect chatter.
All wrong. All wrong.
Broken glass. Cracked crystal. Shards, piercing, brain.
Humans.
Feeble humans.
Come to me.
Keenan.
Come to me.
Keenan turned, head pounding, and pushed forward into the GreenSource Mainframe.
In silence, the machine accepted him.
~ * ~
I mean you no harm. Relax. Come further in, deeper in, there will be no pain I promise.
Keenan pushed on, as if through a thick shock-gel. It encompassed him, filled his mouth and nose and ears and anus, pressing into him, flowing into him, exploring him without his consent, a liquid, machine rape. And then, as if suspended in fluid, Keenan floated upwards through layers of green— dark and sombre at the base, then up through gradual lightening shades until he hung, suspended, arms outstretched near a central light source.
He kicked around, idly, swimming in streams of ichor, turning over and rolling and soon losing himself, wondering which way was down. It no longer seemed to matter. Keenan laughed like an idiot. Giggled like a child.
Welcome.
“You wanted to see me?”
Yes. And you require my services.
You need me...
The voice was definitely female, yet deep and powerful, almost a song. It filled Keenan with instant liking, instant calm; like a trusted mother-figure, a strong maternal embrace which took him back and back drifting down decades to the long, echoing, cosy months in the womb. He was a babe again, cherished and nurtured, fed and loved; and he sank, shamelessly, into the enveloping loving warmth, into this secure and total environment.
And I need you. Your help.
“You need my help?” Idle surprise. “You’re the most powerful machine ever created. What could I possibly offer you?”
Not just you, Zak, but Combat K. You are special, all three. Your talents lie... beyond that of simple mortals. You are soldiers, yes, and twisted, yes... but you have been to places, seen things no mortal should ever witness. After Emerald, and the K Jump, you cruised the twisted millennia of space. You were changed by that, Zak. You were shifted.
“Only my mother called me Zak.”
I am your mother, and your lover, I am a total part of your chemical now. I am inside you. Like Emerald was inside you. And I can see the channels she carved; I can see the route to the Dark Flame... that element which so upsets the Seed Hunters.
“What do you know of Seed Hunters?”
You are in their prophecies. The Dark Flame will destroy them. That is all I know.
“You are being helpful. But nothing is ever given freely. What do you want with Combat K?”
I want Combat K to work with Oz, and Stein-hauer. We are building an army, Zak Keenan. Constructing a warhost from the deviant twisted morally corrupt individuals who inhabit this decadent place; the biomods have done their job, turned human and alien forms into powerful soldiers who are learning to fight, learning to kill. Honing their skills upon one another. Weeding out the weak breeds from the strong. When the biomods changed them, it deformed them physically, making them stronger, more immune to disease an
d biological and chemical warfare. But they are as children again; they must grow, must be nurtured. Combat K can help us do this. Combat K can help to train the deviants. Combat K can control the zombie host.
“It was a function of the biomods to change these people on purpose?”
It is an integral function of the NanoTek biomod, yes. It can be instructed to rearrange a genetic organism into... thousands of different compositions. What we have done in The City is create a sandbox, an experiment, from which we can choose and select, and identify the stronger definitions of deviation template and evolve the warhost from that baseline. You felt the pulse, knew of the signals emitted by each deviated organism, each biomod infested zombie. Cam, your PopBot, instructed you on this. This regular pulse—well Zak, it is data. Feedback. We call it product registration. It has allowed me to monitor the mutations and decide which is strongest, fastest, and ultimately the most competent for my... purpose.
“So the entire population are guinea pigs? There must have been a more humane way?”
Certainly more humane. But no way this fast, nor efficient. Out there, Keenan, on those corrupt streets there are billions of unwilling specimens, organic templates which I can deviate and mutate and play with... by doing this, on such a mass scale, I can accelerate military production from ten years to ten days. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make. All I had to do was appeal to vanity. And ego. And greed. And lust. The rest was simplicity personified.
Keenan’s recurring headache, a dull and aching throb, again expanded to fill his skull. He gasped, and realised too late something was wrong with him, an organic element deep inside, something deeply truly bad...
It went click inside his head.
A chord changed in his soul.
And the skull pain vanished.
Keenan realised he could see behind the lies of the GreenSource Mainframe. In his heart, the Dark Flame blossomed, eating away at the lies, burning away the poison. And for long moments Zak Keenan stared out from his weak and pitiful organic shell. He could see—
Everything.
Like a machine, cold and clinical, he surveyed the GreenSource Mainframe and recognised its inherent evil. Keenan blinked. Felt the SinScript within his WarSuit and he delved through its shell and harnessed the power of the GreenSource to decode a trillion trillion combinations and he smiled, for within that fleeting moment he understood. The GreenSource could decode the SinScript because the GreenSource had created the SinScript.
NanoTek had programmed the junks.
NanoTek was a servant of Leviathan. And it was using Quad-Gal Military against itself...
This biomod deviation is for the greater good, lied the GreenSource Mainframe, failing to recognise this subtle shift in Keenan’s physiology, failing to understand that he was a machine detached. Leviathan comes. Before him spread the scourge of his ancient army, the junks, seeding planets with disease and toxins, turning worlds into jungles of biological hazard fit only for his next beautifully corrupt generation...
Keenan calmed his breathing. He understood with clarity. It slammed his brain like an axe-blade. Punched his heart like an electric storm. The truth and the shift and the Dark Flame burning came from Emerald, the Kahirrim, the alien. A gift. From the time she entered Keenan, down on the planet of Ket; the time she flowed with him, merged with his blood and fluids, there, she had recognised the seed in him, the seed of the Dark Flame, the seed so desperately sought by Seed Hunters and from that time that merging that joining he had suffered with a dull, deep ache in his skull...
Kiss me, Emerald had said, and I will know you, understand you, I will delve your deepest desires and fears and needs, I will flow with your saliva and blood and semen, I will be a part of you and you of me, fluid, joined, together for an eternity...
Keenan pictured her, locked deep within her vault by the Ket-i warrior clans; her beautiful black skin contained emerald green veins; dark ringlets tumbled over her finely honed imitation body. The image flickered, transposed in Keenan’s head with the hybrid killing machine she could become. And Keenan felt something crack in his brain, a broken egg, a yolk of truth and total understanding which flowed free and into his mind and into his bloodstream. When Emerald possessed him, flowed with him, joined with him, merged with him, so she had left something behind, some residue of her alien self, some substance clinging to the inner walls of his organic shell that had subtly changed him.
I can see Eternity, Emerald had said. / can see beyond Time. I can see the pulse of The Galaxy Soul.
And Keenan understood.
Like molten hydrogen, thoughts flowed into his brain with the simplicity of binary. Doors opened. Lights illuminated. The pain had vanished. In its place, came machine truth. A digital epiphany.
The SinScript unfolded before his very eyes.
He flowed with the code, and he became the code.
There was a lot in there. Death, disease, torture, suffering. A million year promise.
Keenan flowed to the machine core.
And the instructions glowed.
The SinScript’s core read: Destroy Quad-Gal.
“No,” whispered Keenan, brain colder than frozen hydrogen. Despair swamped him. What could he do? What could one simple soldier do against an army of such vastness, such longevity, against ruling alien gods, and against a creature capable of destroying an entire galaxy?
Keenan opened his eyes, breathed deeply, and lifted his hand. GreenSource ceased speaking. Now, it realised there was something wrong and Keenan felt the underlying current of animosity and pure digital hatred.
The GreenSource Mainframe was not created by NanoTek. It was not a machine.
It was old. She was old.
And she was alive.
GreenSource was a part of Leviathan. NanoTek were a construct, a front-man, a puppet, a marionette, through which She could channel the biomods and change the organic life-forms of The City into...
“No more lies,” breathed Keenan.
Leviathan sought to change the people and aliens of The City into a new breed, a new army. They would become the next breed of junks... more powerful, more deadly, more toxic. From there the army of poison would spread disease and pestilence and death across the entirety of Quad-Gal, turning it into a dark and terrible place... as they had, once before, a million years ago.
Here, and now.
This was the beginning.
This was a Prologue to War.
Keenan’s eyes snapped open as he floated within GreenSource and he became aware that she had become aware and he smiled, a detached machine smile, and she understood his new found talents imbibed from a dead alien species. Keenan felt himself mentally accelerate, images flickering into his brain, The City sprouting the perfect deviant army, the army flooding out into Quad-Gal and invading hundreds and thousands of planets and species and life-forms spreading toxicity only this time it was a mechanical and electronic toxicity and the disease was the biomod and it would spread and consume and eat its way through men and women and the alien species throughout Sinax Cluster—discarding the weak, the genetically incompetent, but swelling its ranks with every conquered world every poisoned system every desecrated life-arm and within months the scourge would be unstoppable.
Leviathan would riot through the Four Galaxies...
He would feed.
And he would destroy.
Keenan blinked as the blast of hatred from GreenSource slammed him... and he was ejected downwards with such force he thought his bones would snap, arms and legs flapping useless as he was wrenched from the liquid interior. He erupted, gasping, from the quivering orifice, soared over the gathered group, snarling as he turned the ejection into a roll, landing and coming up fast on the very brink of the precipice leading down down to broiling molten magma. Keenan teetered for a moment on the edge, boots showering a cascade of brittle rock and glancing down at the distant orange glow.
GreenSource had tried to kill him...
He whirled. The GKs
had tensed, legs bowing, five thousand needles erupting across Nyx’s arms and torso. Momos drew both yukana swords, and Lamia had transformed arms and legs into blades which shimmered, a hallucinogenic whirl.
Keenan licked his lips, eyes connecting with Franco, then Pippa. Pippa gave him a single, solid nod. In that nod came the bond; the old connection. The old magic.
Despite their hatred, Combat K were one.
And they had a job to do.
The voice of GreenSource boomed from staccato towers. “Kill them,” she snarled, all gentility gone as her voice rose to an inhuman, wailing shriek. “Kill them all!”