Biohell

by Andy Remic

  “It poisoned me,” gasped Franco, eyes wide.

  “Come on.”

  “I’m going to die, Keenan,” he gasped. “I’ve four minutes left. Shit! And not a babe in sight!”

  Keenan nodded, face grim, and helped Franco stagger to his feet. Swaying like drunk brothers, the two men tottered to the Line booth, Franco still trailing his axe.

  Against the far wall, Nyx uncurled and stood in a fluid motion. Her eyes met Keenan’s.

  “Fucker,” she said.

  Keenan dragged Franco into the booth, and the Line slammed them down as, in a musical harmony, four sets of High-J, in perfect synchronicity, detonated.

  The explosion was louder than Nuclear.

  Louder than War.

  And to Keenan’s ears, as they howled down the Line towards the GreenSource Mainframe far far below NanoTek’s Black Rose Citadel, the savage detonation of anti-gravitational engines seemed louder than Death itself...

  ~ * ~

  Fire and shrapnel raged. Ate. Exploded. Vaporised. Consumed. Engulfed. Heat and fire savaged through the SPIRAL dock. Engines were smashed and boiled into nothing in the heart of a screaming radiation-filled fireball. With perfect unity, all four High-J bombs detonated. All four AGE engines died. And the SPIRAL dock, weighing in at just over a million tonnes, tilted, slowly, one edge going down in a searing, thousand metre wall of flame which lit The City for a hundred miles. More secondary explosions rocked the internals of the dock, deep muffled concussions, but despite their size and ferocity, they were miniscule in comparison to the might of the dock itself, its sheer titanic mass. Listing now, one end dropping, gravity grabbed the huge station nearly two kilometres up in the sky and flung it like a rocket towards the world below. Towards NanoTek. Towards the GreenSource Mainframe... and the miniscule, pathetic, fragile creatures known as Man.

  Across The City, the raging battles of zombies, SIMs, Slabs, humans, all those still fighting or hiding from estranged zombie individuals—all paused and stared at the illuminated sky. Fire raged and broiled in the heavens. Night turned to day. Green light and white light flashed, side by side, in an apocalyptic firestorm which vaporised the clouds and the darkness, and for some strange reason, to those who peered upwards, seemed to herald a new, clean, beginning.

  The SPIRAL dock fell, massive and silent, fire raging behind it like a detonating trail of solar radiation.

  Below, The Black Rose Citadel waited.

  NanoTek waited.

  And the whole planet seemed to hold its breath...

  ~ * ~

  Keenan and Franco rushed downwards, Keenan in grim silence, Franco heaving occasionally, face gaunt, lips blue and trembling. Far above Keenan felt more than heard or saw the SPIRAL dock begin its rapid descent. And he knew: knew he should have given them more time, knew he should have given them a larger window of escape... but that would have meant leaving the High-J susceptible to Nyx, and God only knew what other agents of the GreenSource Mainframe were on the prowl. No. This way was best. Even if it meant, ultimately, their own demise.

  Keenan saw Franco begin to topple, losing his ability to stand, and he grabbed the squaddie’s loose, flopping arm. “Stay with it, buddy,” he muttered.

  Franco said nothing. His eyes had closed.

  Down they slammed, and above them something big was shaking, vibrating, and Keenan peered up and could see, distantly through the tunnel of the Line, that the whole edifice was collapsing and chasing the two men, the two instigators of its annihilation, down towards their inevitable deaths...

  Franco’s eyes snapped over. “We’re gonna get squashed!” he snapped, voice quavering.

  Keenan nodded. “Maybe.”

  “You’ll have to leave me.”

  “I ain’t leaving anybody.”

  “Keenan!” Franco grabbed his comrade’s War-Suit, and shook him. “I can hardly stand! You can’t help me down those GreenSource towers. We won’t have enough time!”

  “I’ll make the time,” said Keenan.

  Franco laughed. “Stupid fucking heroics. You’re being the dumb and useless stubborn bastard I always loved. But listen to me, Keenan, and listen good.” Keenan stared hard at his insane friend, ironically, in these last few moments leading to his tox-filled death, more lucid than most supposedly sane men. “Your girls wouldn’t thank you for your sacrifice.”

  “That’s a cheap shot.”

  “It’s all I have.”

  “I’m not leaving you, Franco. If we die, we die together.”

  Franco said nothing. He passed into unconsciousness, body trembling as the poison from Nyx spread through his glands and arteries. His legs began to kick.

  Above, a million tonnes of SPIRAL dock, in accelerating descent, began to roar...

  ~ * ~

  Mel was dying. Not just from the poison injected by the GK AIs, but from Dr Oz. He Was wearing her down. Even now she could feel her strength leaving her. A genetic eight-foot mutation super-soldier she might be, but even one of those could only fight for so long. The two grappled, and Oz slammed Mel to the rock. He stood over her, shirt and glass suit torn in long jagged ribbons, one shoe lost, his tie tattered confetti. But he was grinning, in triumph, in superiority, in majesty.

  “I made you,” he snarled. Blood mixed with his saliva. Behind one of his eyes something twitched. “I created you! I created the biomods! I fucking own you!”

  He took a deep breath. Mel, shivering and broken, weak and exhausted, lay there and bled.

  Oz lifted his hands above his head, hands curled into claws. He knew what he must do. He would rip out her heart. Imbibe her core biomods, absorb them into himself. Then he could shift their code and she would die, writhing, on the rock. He, however, would become stronger. A Combined.

  Suddenly, Oz heard the sound of screaming engines, and whirled, too late—straight into the accelerating nose cone of the SLAM Cruiser. It rammed him at a phenomenal rate, lifting him grunting from the platform and propelling him across the chamber, across the abyss, and spreading him across the rock wall. He screamed, a long loud wail as his body, his flesh, his intestines, spread out in a colourful flat blue platter and his eyes met Pippa’s calm, cold, grey gaze in the cockpit beyond.

  Pippa stared deep into Oz’s biomod replicated eyes. She increased the pressure of the SLAM, watched his trapped body writhing and curling, black mist forming and reforming his mashed bones and broken spine and spread flesh, focused as he squirmed and screamed and thrashed, pinned against the wall, unable to break free...

  “Have a nice day, fucker,” she said, and hammered the SLAM into reverse. The Cruiser backed up, leaving Dr Oz spread across the wall, his flesh writhing like albino cobras, then with wide eyes he tumbled forward and fell, flailing, struggling, into the magma far below.

  Pippa breathed deep. Blood pulsed down her flank. She blinked, almost passing back into the realm of unconsciousness. Wearily, she banked the SLAM Cruiser, watched warning sensors flicker above the console, and her brow contorted in confusion. The readings told her something near a million tonnes in weight was accelerating towards them at an incredible speed...

  The puzzle clicked into place.

  She understood what Keenan had done.

  She sped to the platform, leapt free, grabbed Mel and helped the huge deviant crawl into the hold trailing thick arterial gore. Without lifting the ramp, Pippa sprinted, gritting her teeth, wincing at the warm flood down her own body, and pointed the SLAM’s nose to the sky, climbing the height of the tower in a few heartbeats and levelling, ramp touching down as Keenan emerged from the Line booth, reached back, and pulled a frothing, kicking Franco after him...

  Keenan dragged Franco up the ramp, and his eyes met Pippa’s for the briefest of moments.

  “We need to go down,” he growled.

  “You do what I think you did?”

  “Now!” he snarled.

  Above, the SPIRAL dock connected with NanoTek HQ. There was thunder, deeper than anything Combat K had ever exp
erienced. But, rather than slowing the titanic station, NanoTek’s Black Rose Citadel crumbled like brittle, pulverised sand. NanoTek slowed the SPIRAL dock’s descent. But it did not halt it.

  With crashes and screams, of rock crushing rock crushing rock, so the SPIRAL dock ploughed downwards with an incredible, mounting pressure, compressing and crushing everything that stood in its path, slamming through alloy and steel and titanium and glass and rock, crushing, compressing, folding, destroying, and Keenan grabbed Franco to stop him tumbling from the SLAM as Pippa turned the machine’s nose down and they sped towards the broiling, agitated magma...

  “Hello!” said a small voice.

  “Cam! Where the hell have you been?”

  “I had an altercation with a few K1LLBots.” The machine, battered, bumped, limping, nevertheless hovered by Keenan’s head. “We need to move fast; the falling station is compressing everything into a pulp...”

  “You don’t fucking say?” snapped Pippa.

  “It’s forcing the magma level to rise.”

  “Will this Cruiser take lava?”

  Cam, lights glittering under a dried husk of black coolant, said, simply, “No.”

  “Cam. Franco’s poisoned. Can you help him?”

  “I will try.”

  Pippa dropped them, levelling just above the broiling sea of red. It popped and fizzed, hissing beneath them, swirling with a glow which burned their eyes.

  “There!” pointed Pippa.

  “A tunnel.”

  “It must be a way out!”

  “It can’t be. Or the lava would take it.”

  “Do we have any other option?”

  Keenan glanced up. Rocks were falling from the top of the cavern, many larger than a house. They thundered, dust and rock tumbling, and the Green-Source Mainframe was shivering, its flanks rock solid now in an attempt to protect itself...

  As Keenan watched, it seemed the world slammed down through the cavern’s roof. One instant, a shaking, dust-pouring image. The next, something huge and black appeared and filled his vision in its entirety.

  “Go!” he screamed, and Pippa powered them into the lava tunnel,. spinning low over rolling magma, banking left and right with ferocious skill as above and around them the world shook and Pippa hissed, through gritted teeth.

  “We’ll have to go under,” she said, voice suddenly calm. She closed the ramp. It locked, with a tiny click.

  “Cam says the SLAM won’t take it.”

  “To hell with Cam. We have no choice!”

  Even as she spoke, waves of lava boiled up, rolling out, washing over them. Pippa thrust herself back in her seat, fear etched like acid on her features. Then, reading her scanners, she nodded, once, and dropped the SLAM Cruiser beneath the molten sea...

  Everything descended into a calm, orange glow.

  All noise, all vibration, all destruction, vanished.

  Franco looked up, from where he lay on the floor. Cam had ejected two thin tubes, and was filtering Franco’s blood. He stared hard at the little machine.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Dialysis.”

  “Die whatastasis?”

  “I’m filtering your blood. Lie still, I don’t want to pump you dry.”

  “Hey, no little alloy gonad is pumping me dry!”

  “Lie still, midget, it’s hard enough filtering the massive amounts of toxin from your body without you rolling around like a lunatic.” His voice dropped an octave. “Anyway, there’s so much shit in your system, its replicating, its an organic semi-synth poison; sentient. It’s fighting me. Don’t get your hopes up, Franco.”

  “Thanks for putting my mind at ease.” Franco beamed. “Hey! Where’s the noise? We escape? We free? I’m so glad everything worked out. How long have I been out?”

  “About four minutes,” said Keenan, voice a monotone. He glanced sideways at Pippa.

  They both stared at the wisps of smoke coming from the SLAM’s console.

  “What’s that orange glow?”

  “Magma.”

  “How’s that, then?”

  “We’re under it,” said Keenan.

  “Is that safe?”

  Keenan grinned, a deaths-head grin. “Hell mate, we’re about to find out.”

  “The scanners aren’t working,” said Pippa, finally. “Everything has shut down. I don’t know which way to go. All the sensors are burned to shit. It’s just too hot down here, Keenan!”

  “This is a SLAM Cruiser, not a space vehicle,” chastised Cam.

  “Just filter his blood,” snapped Keenan.

  “I’m trying my best,” sulked Cam.

  “Will you two stop arguing! I’m trying to navigate!”

  Silence descended.

  They watched, from the SLAM’s cockpit, as fire raged across the Cruiser’s nose-cone. Gradually, the burning began to move towards them. It was a worrying sight.

  Franco shuffled into one of the pilot’s seats. “Should it do that?” he asked, face grey with poison.

  “I—don’t think so,” said Pippa.

  “We’re going to die down here, aren’t we?” said Franco.

  Nobody answered him.

  “Pippa?”

  “Yeah Franco?” Her gaze was focused on the scanners, dials and display screens. She glanced up. Looked into his eyes.

  “We’ve probably got a few minutes,” he said, hopefully.

  Pippa stared at him. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Actually, I was deadly serious.”

  “You’re not putting your toxic dick anywhere near me, Haggis.”

  “Well, it was just a thought.”

  Outside, suddenly, everything went black. There came a clang. Sound seemed to return, hissing through the SLAM Cruiser as metal started ticking, and pinging, and buckling with crunches of cooling, superheated alloy.

  Then, lights illuminated. Bright magnesium lights.

  “What’s going on?” muttered Pippa.

  A voice crackled over the speakers.

  “Hi there!” it said. “Thought you guys might need a ride.”

  It was Knuckles.

  “Knuckles!” shouted Franco, delight swamping his face. “How d’ya get down here, lad?”

  “We’ve been tracking you for days, using the old Combat K channels. But you lost us when you came down into this shit-heap. None of the scanners would work. We picked you up again when you dived under the lava... thought you might need a lift.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  Another voice came over the speakers. “You sent a little kid and a back-breaking rugby woman to do your dirty work! Franco Haggis, you should be damned ashamed of yourself!”

  “Slick? You old dog!”

  “Well, you saved my arse, mate. It would be rude not to try and return the favour.”

  Keenan leant forward. “Can you get us out of this pit?”

  “Sure,” drawled Slick. “But you’ll have to hang on. We’re in a lava flow; it’s gonna take some powerful thrust.”

  “After what we’ve been through, it’ll be a walk in the park,” muttered Keenan, and slumped back in the pilot’s chair. He glanced over and grinned at Pippa. “Looks like we made it, girl.”

  “We?”

  Keenan shook his head, glancing away. Bitterness flooded him then. Bitterness, and a hatred he knew would never, ever leave him. How could it?

  Pippa had murdered his babes.

  ~ * ~

  The Class I Marine Frigate burst from a dark, rolling ocean with low-level engines screaming and trailing spray, steam and falling chunks of volcanic rock. It banked at a slow speed and hovered for a few moments, blue lights sweeping.

  NanoTek’s Black Rose Citadel was no more. The SPIRAL port collapse had completely crushed it, pushing it down beneath the rock and earth, caving in the entire island and causing tidal waves to heave out from the point of impact triggering anti-tidal defence screens to slam up from abandoned promenades the length and breadth of downtown City Shore
s.

  Carrying Combat K like a baby in a womb, only in this case a corrupt and cynical baby high on the adrenaline of finding itself far from simple in-uterus comforts, the Marine Frigate, huge and black and angular, banked again, and rose above the smoking, shattered devastation that was NanoTek’s crushed and pounded HQ.

  Keenan, Pippa and Franco stared down at the city-wide wreckage.