by Andy Remic
“Wait!” snapped the powerful command of Steinhauer. “What’s this? What’s going on?” His head snapped from Keenan to Dr Oz, then back; and as his eyes met Keenan’s there was a question there, confusion, and in that split second Keenan realised Steinhauer’s intentions were honourable; he really, truly believed he was helping Quad-Gal Military, believed that Oz and GreenSource were enemies of Leviathan and the junks... instead of the World Eater’s benefactor.
Oz rolled fast, yukana sword slamming horizontally through Steinhauer’s legs, just above knees. The blade exited on a fine spray of blood, which rolled down the black blade into streamers against volcanic rock. Steinhauer screamed, his organism separating into three discrete parts. Femurs severed, he tried to step forward, thighs parting with crisp clacks from knee joints as he toppled onto the rock with blood pumping a river...
Combat K smashed into action... with an automatic precision which made them what they were. Pippa charged Oz, who slashed the hissing yukana at her throat. She twisted, rolling fast with the blow, HotWire bound arms flashing up. The yukana parted the wire, which fizzled and gave a small pop. Pippa rolled, hit the floor, lashed out with boots and swept Oz’s legs away...
The GKs spread out. Their guns yammered, and Keenan dived, grabbing the Makarov from Steinhauer’s holster and flinging it to Franco. He yanked Steinhauer’s MPK, still connected to the screaming, legless man with paracord, and opened fire on the GKs which danced back, sparks momentarily flashing across black alloy frames. And Keenan realised, with a nasty shock, they were trying to protect the GreenSource Mainframe...
Franco caught the Makarov, also opened fire. He ran towards the SLAM Cruiser, diving inside and grabbing their packs. He pulled free a G Knife, slit his binding HotWire, then shouldered his pack and sprinted down the ramp.
“Keenan!”
Keenan caught the blade, MPK still howling sending roaring scythes of bullets into and past the GK AIs, bullets impacting with soft whumps in the walls of GreenSource. Keenan sliced his own bonds, then glanced down into Steinhauer’s tortured face.
Steinhauer seemed about to speak... but he slumped back, and was still. Keenan watched the life-light die in his eyes. Sorrow ripped through him. They had shared their moments of animosity, of differing opinions. Squabbled like kids on occasion. Steinhauer thought Keenan was a renegade, a psycho and a loose cannon. Keenan thought Steinhauer was an army bureaucrat, a bastard with a pencil shoved up his arse. But they were both still Combat K; brothers. Keenan’s head lifted. His eyes were dark, glinting evil under the surreal green light of the Mainframe.
Franco skidded next to him, panting, and they focused on the GKs. All three machines were motionless. Waiting?
Pippa knelt on Oz’s chest, yukana against his throat. Blood trickled from a fresh cut.
They had reached an impasse.
“I assume the Mainframe is a baddy?” Franco said, voice low, eyes never leaving the GKs.
“It’s part of Leviathan. An extension.” Keenan grimaced. “We have to destroy it.”
Franco glanced up at the mammoth, kilometre-high structure, with its jagged towering peaks, its green-glinting, crystalline, splintered towers. He hoisted a fistful of grenades. Grinned a bad grin. “I predict a riot?” he suggested.
“Damn fucking right.”
Dr Oz’s voice was cool and smooth under the pressing yukana blade. “If you all lay down your weapons, you may just survive this encounter. GreenSource will not tolerate your misbehaviour.” He watched from his prone position as Franco sidled to Mel, and with the G Knife, parted the HotWire which imprisoned her. She unrolled in height, stretched muscles long compressed by deviant pyro-wire, and her small, mottled head lowered on a long corrugated neck and she grinned at Dr Oz, then leered over towards the three GKs.
Mel took a weaving, threatening step, and Franco skipped back, out of her way.
“I think she’s pissed!” snapped Keenan.
“Are you surprised? Look what they did to her! Now she has somebody to blame.”
Franco fired a few more shots from the Makarov. “Keenan, you out of ammo?”
Keenan nodded.
Two things happened at once. The GKs, black, glossy, thin-limbed, sculpted, roared in high-pitched digital mimicry, the sound of tortured bandwidth, and moved fast... charging Keenan and Franco with weapons rippling, poison dripping from long slim jaws containing row on row of needle-thin teeth. Beneath Pippa, Oz squirmed and flowed away from her, standing to stare at her suddenly off-balance, kneeling figure.
Franco pulled a BABE grenade pin, yanked back his arm, but it was too late as the GKs sprinted fast, jaws clacking, and they would be on him in an instant mashing, tearing, injecting...
Pippa swept out the yukana, but Oz leapt the sweep with incredible agility, dodged left, then right, avoiding the hissing blur of blade. He accelerated, was beside Pippa, arm slamming down and making Pippa gasp at the impact. She head-butted him, and Oz’s jewelled teeth impaled her head drawing blood. She slashed out, yukana singing, but Oz ducked and twisted, side-kicked her in the belly with stunning force, tossing her backwards across the volcanic rock platform to roll, dangerously close to the edge.
“Aiie!” screamed Franco as the AIs were on him, bringing up his arm before his face as something large, and brown, and thrashing and growling connected with all three GKs in one terrific launch and sent them spinning like skittles across the rock, thin limbs rattling, poison arcing like incontinent piss. Mel stood, brutal, massive, glowering, and growled back at Keenan and Franco who exchanged worried glances. Mel ran at the GKs, and Momos rose, twin yukanas whirling, but Mel stepped between them, swaying, claws lashing out and grating against alloy.
“She can’t kill them all,” said Keenan.
“We have to help her!”
“No! We destroy GreenSource.”
Franco turned tortured eyes on his friend and brother. “I... have to help her.”
“This is her sacrifice,” snapped Keenan. “Focus. Bombs?”
Franco grasped his pack before him. “Enough High-J to put a Shuttle into orbit.”
“Let’s do it.”
Pippa danced with Oz, blade hissing and slashing, balanced on the edge of the precipice. Franco turned eyes on her, again wanting desperately to help his friend...
“Just do it, Franco,” snarled Pippa, shaking sweat from her shoulder-length black hair. “I’ve got this fucker sorted.”
Her eyes met Keenan’s. He ground his teeth. Gave her a nod. Without her, they could not destroy GreenSource... Without Pippa, without Combat K as one, they could not free the people of The City from their biological entrapment.
They were a machine.
A simple, well-oiled unit.
Franco ran, a few steps behind Keenan. They reached the edge of the GreenSource Mainframe, took hold of the soft, jelly-like substance, and started to hoist themselves up, boots and sandals kicking into the moving, rolling substance, hands grabbing and tearing as they climbed with grim faces and clamped, tortured jaws.
They climbed for a few minutes, powering up the flank of the widest tower. Below, Mel was battling with all three GK AIs, her claws pounding and hammering, jaws twisting and grinding. The two men paused, glancing down. Mel picked up Momos, and with a roar flung her into the abyss. Momos twirled, black-enamelled limbs glittering as she fell, and disappeared into the molten lake far, far below.
“Atta girl!” roared Franco.
“Keep climbing.”
“I’m shagged, Keenan!”
“Keep climbing!”
“But Keenan, it’s like climbing up a great mound of wobbling tits!” said Franco. He considered this. “Actually, I suppose in some ways I should be mightily thankful.”
“Be thankful,” snapped Keenan.
They pushed on, faster and faster, faces red, sweat dripping, muscles screaming with fatigue.
Below, Pippa was not faring well. Oz had grasped one of Momos’s discarded yukana swords and they duelled, b
lades clashing and ringing, sparks flying.
In her years of violence, Pippa had fought many opponents. Only a few had been her better. But here, now, in this place, Oz was a demon, skilled like nothing she had ever experienced. Pippa fought with every ounce of talent and strength and experience, used every trick she knew; and still Oz played with her, a cat with a hobbled bird, a shark with an injured fish.
She was outclassed. And, bitterly, she knew it.
Blades clashed, discordant music. Pippa leapt back, Oz’s yukana a hair’s-breadth from her face, then she closed on him and his sword opened a line across her ribs, making her gasp; but she was in close, too close, her sword twisted at a strange angle and she reversed the cut, blade sliding through Oz’s neck in a bright spurt of arterial gore. She stepped neatly away from her dark, death-lover’s embrace, ripped her sword sideways, viciously, and decapitated Dr Oz with all the savagery of the betrayed. Panting, bathed in sweat and blood, she dropped to her knees, her yukana clattering at her feet, hands clasping her opened rib-cage with a yelp. Blood pulsed through her fingers and she twisted, peering down at her sliced uniform and the pale, exposed flesh—her interior flesh, and yellow fat sub-strata—beneath. She could see the ivory of exposed bone. She shuddered.
“That son-of-a-bitch,” she mouthed. And realised. Something was... wrong.
She glanced up. Dr Oz’s body had failed to fall. It stood, headless, swaying, as if modestly inebriated, the bloody, black-bladed sword still clenched in Oz’s neatly manicured and almost effeminate fingers.
Pippa looked over to the severed head. It was glassy eyed. Dead.
Why doesn’t the body fall? she thought.
More blood pumped through her fingers, oozing.
Why doesn’t the fucker collapse?
Her eyes passed Oz’s oddly behaving corpse, watched Mel batter the GKs, holding one in each powerfully bulging arm and swinging them round and round by their ankles to finally slam against one another with a clash and crash of buckling TitaniumVI casings and a scatter of loose rivets.
Pippa winced.
Looked up again.
And allowed a deep hiss through wet lips. She gritted her teeth and reached slowly forward, searching for her sword.
A dark mist had appeared, rising from Dr Oz’s neck. It swirled up, billions of tiny particles coalescing and forming slowly, agonisingly, into the shape of Oz’s recently departed head. Artistically, like metal melting over a wire-work mesh, Oz’s head reformed, flushed slowly with colour, and was suddenly real.
He blinked. Gasped. Touched at his own throat as if testing reality. Then, he lowered his head, eyes staring out at Pippa with new, refreshed, rejuvenated life.
“A wonderful thing, these biomods,” Oz said.
~ * ~
Mel, despite appearances, was fighting a losing battle. In the raging inferno of her mind something started to register. It was a weakness; a weakness flooding through her system and she realised, as the GK’s slender jaws tore at her, ripping flesh, tearing skin, snapping her bones... she realised with a dawning, primeval understanding that the AIs were gradually poisoning her...
Mel grabbed Nyx in a head-lock, rolled with the flailing machine kicking legs and slashing sparks from volcanic rock, then with Nyx’s head in both clawed hands she bashed the machine’s skull repeatedly and violently against the rock. Five times, six times, Mel felt it buckling under the might of her superhuman deviated muscles...
Lamia landed on Mel’s back, blade-arms attempting to cut Mel’s throat but Mel twisted fast, catching the blades in claws and attempting to bend them, to snap them—as Nyx hit her in the lower back at full charge, buckling Mel who heard several of her own spinal discs pop and crack and she grabbed both machines, hatred a bottomless well and they were a symbol of NanoTek a representation of the monolithic corporation who had abused her and deviated her and changed her from a sweet human woman into... this.
With a GK under each arm, Mel roared and charged the edge of the abyss. She leapt, both machines thrashing against her, slicing her, cutting her, and all three fell suddenly, swiftly, into the dark.
For long moments, all was silent.
Then, a scrabbling sound came from the edge.
In the green glow from GreenSource towers, stones rattled. Something moved at the edge of the precipice. Something black, and enamelled, gleaming against a lip of volcanic rock. Moving fast, accelerating with thumping hydraulics, a teardrop head appeared with matt black discs for eyes, and a long thin-limbed arm reached up as Nyx dragged her battered AI body from the pit.
She crawled on battered, twisted legs, then stood. One arm had been torn free, and the shoulder joint trailed organic-looking tendons. Her head swivelled, staring at where Pippa was about to die... then looked up to the frantically climbing figures of Keenan and Franco.
Nyx sprinted, leapt, and with swift, elegant movements, and leaving a trail of toxic poison from rows of needle-thin teeth in her wake, she began to climb.
~ * ~
Franco glanced down. Saw Mel go over the edge with the two kicking, thrashing AIs. “No!” he screamed, face suddenly stunned, eyes wide in disbelief.
Keenan grunted, and halted his ascent.
Franco’s head slammed up. “What is it?”
Keenan had both arms, up to the elbow, trapped inside the GreenSource tower. As Franco watched, Keenan was yanked close to the wall, where suddenly his face pressed against the glutinous substance and the tower itself started to drag him in...
“Shit,” hissed Franco. “Wait Keenan! I’m coming! Don’t get sucked in! Franco will save the day!” He took a great handful of jelly and felt a curious twisting motion; with a squelch it sucked in his hand, his wrist, then twisted him in up to his elbow sending pain shooting through his joints. Franco yelled in surprise, pain and fear. Then felt his sandaled feet suddenly overwhelmed, sucked at, pulled into the tower... where it twisted his knees against their joints and made him howl and yammer in pain...
“You’ve got to get free!” screamed Keenan. “It’s a living organism! It’ll absorb us! Digest us!”
Franco struggled and pulled with all his strength, one hand flailing uselessly. But what can I do? he thought, mind wild, thoughts a chemical slurry. What the hell can I do? Look at me! A useless midget! “What shall I do?” he screamed, but Keenan could not answer. His head had been sucked into GreenSource.
He was suffocating.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 16
THE OLD MAGIC
Cam counted the seconds. Each speeding tick and tock seemed to last an eternity.
Three seconds.
The K1LLBots were closing, saws buzzing fast and bright and jewelled, and Cam could acknowledge by their formation, and the angle of their circular, spinning attack, that they intended to split him into apple slices along his globular latitude...
Two seconds.
What was it that Gunnery Sergeant Reznor always used to say? Other than clean that floor, maggots, of course, and sort out that puke, maggots. What had it been? Cam hummed nervously, trying to remember. If he’d had fingers, he would have drummed them against a solid table top.
Oh yes.
Let’s get the job done.
One second.
So, thought Cam, I’d better get that job done. Suddenly, he ignited his external jets. Fire billowed in a high-intensity stream, slamming out and over the K1LLBots and Cam felt their pulses of confusion and sudden fear as they realised—Cam wasn’t trying to burn them, because they were pretty much fry-proof... unless... no... hell, he was trying to ignite the coolant. Cam had analysed the cooling sludge. It consisted of trimethyprene hydrogen5 chloroxide. A superb coolant, unless it reached 1024°C, whereupon it became an unstable chemical compound which would instigate a fiery chain reaction capable of spreading through the entirety of the coolant system...
In other words, Bad News.
Cam dodged, whirling, around the charging K1LLBots, still emitting his fire and monitoring the su
rrounding temp. Come on, come on he hummed, The Sump’s current dragging him around in a wide arc and sending him streaming back towards the core base. The K1LLBots whirled, tracking him, unsure what to do now. Because, if Cam did ignite the coolant, then surely they’d all...
Cook.
Ho hum. Cam grinned. Or would have, if he’d had a mouth.
1022°.
Dum de dum de dum. Round and round we go. Fire scorched. The trimethyprene hydrogen5 chloroxide started to squeal like a live thing. It glooped and bubbled. Cam clucked with annoyance. Come on baby! Let’s get this party started!
1023°.
Hey hey, gotta time this one just right...