by Andy Remic
Gunshots flickered distantly, although Durell could not hear their blasts from his luxury office. The JT8s swarmed forward against a blockade, overrunning it. Fire flared. There was a tiny green glow of detonation, and more ragged shooting from unleashed automatic weaponry.
Turning his back, Durell moved towards the long wooden desk and seated himself at its head. He ran a deformed claw hand along the fine lacquered wood, tracing patterns of dark grain, delighting in the flawless smooth surface.
A steel door at the far end of the chamber opened and a Nex stepped onto the plush carpet, dragging a half-naked, battered, raze-wire-bound captive.
The Nex was of no great stature; she wore a tight body-hugging black uniform and soft black boots. She had an AK52 slung over one shoulder and her face was unmasked; copper eyes glowed brightly in a beautifully pale and oval face. The hair was cut short near the scalp, leaving a tight black forest of spikes, but the lack of hair only accentuated the cold beauty of the high cheekbones and unblemished skin.
She prodded the man, who stumbled forward and fell to his knees for a moment. He was breathing heavily, and blood had dried on his face. He lifted his steel-grey gaze and fixed it on Durell, then snarled something incomprehensible and surged upwards. He lurched to a halt in front of Durell—with the female Nex’s sub-machine gun poking viciously into his back.
He smiled, a low spiteful smile laced with traces of blood. ‘So you’ve finally chosen to see me. You’ve finally found your balls, Durell, you twisted piece of rat-shit.’
‘Welcome to my simple home, Mr Haven.’ Durell spoke softly. Without emotion. He pushed back the hood of his heavy robe and smiled his own curious twisted smile. ‘I am sorry for your pain—truly I am.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Tut, tut. Your anger is misplaced, my little Spiral friend. I never gave the order to beat you into a senseless pulp; you may thank the JT8s for that honour—and let us be honest with one another: the Justice Troops are a product of your world, not mine.’
Haven seemed to sag a little then; Durell saw the raze-wire digging into his wrists and the blood rolling down over his hands, dripping to the carpet. Durell motioned to the female Nex warrior who reached forward. There was an electronic blip and the raze-wire retreated into itself and dropped to the carpet.
Haven looked up, rubbing at his deeply lacerated flesh and flexing his fingers slowly, allowing life to flood back into his crippled near-blue hands. He took a step forward, but felt the prod of the gun in his back once more. He laughed then, a bitter laugh of cynicism and despair. ‘You going to kill me then, Durell? You know I don’t have the information you want. I just don’t have it—and no amount of torture can make me talk.’ His tone was mocking, and despite his obvious pain and hopeless predicament there was a glint of victory shining in his cold hard eyes.
Durell sighed, shaking his head. ‘We will scan you for brain tattoos. It will be very painful.’
‘Scan me, fucker. I don’t have the access codes to the SpiralGRID—as you will shortly discover. Now I have a question for you…’ Their eyes met and for a long moment there was a tense silence. The female Nex retreated a little, as if sensing that she wasn’t needed.
‘Please feel free to ask.’ Durell turned and moved once more towards the darkened glass. He stared down over the devastation of Manhattan—and over the distant chaos of rubble across the East River, in Queens and Brooklyn. He stared at the destruction he had commissioned, the sea of rubble he had wrought.
‘What happened?’ Haven’s voice was softer now, gentler. There was a thick slur of sentiment; of nostalgia. Durell turned and saw that Haven’s head was tilted slightly, eyes bright as if the man was holding back tears. ‘What happened to you? We used to be friends.’
‘Nothing happened, Haven—except the world became more corrupt, Spiral passed over more and more abominations. The politicians and the generals said the right words, earned their promotions and elections by clever words, by slick marketing and money games and underhand tactics. But when the world fell into decline they never did what was necessary; they complained and moaned, whined and stalled and found an eternity of feeble excuses. And yes—I have wrought a terrible destruction—but nothing so terrible that it cannot be rebuilt, cannot be reborn, cannot be improved.’
‘Improved? You call the Nex an improvement? You truly are insane, Durell. I always used to joke back in the NexSquad days that you drank your fill from the mercury fountain—but fuck me if you weren’t bathing in a toxic lake instead.’
‘You misunderstand my intentions,’ crooned Durell, his gaze locked on New York. Once more he witnessed the flashes of shotgun blasts. The city below him was a turmoil of anarchy, a maelstrom of human struggle. A battleground for Nex and Spiral, REBS and JT8s.
A high-pitched shrill alerted Durell, who moved smoothly—with only a few tiny crackles from beneath his robe—and pressed a sleek alloy button. A huge black screen shimmered into life to reveal the face of a Nex, haughty-looking, with narrow copper eyes and short black bristling hair.
‘Yes, Mace?’
‘Sir, the QIV processor has completed the compilation. We have mapped the new definitions for the HATE zones and managed to control further creeping by spraying anti-HATE borders delivered by chopper. It can no longer infiltrate the cities.’
‘Good. So are we—’ Durell chuckled lightly, as if amused by the word ‘—safe, for the moment?’
‘It is controlled,’ said Mace simply.
‘Good work. Well done.’
‘What shall we do with the recent prisoners? The ones who unknowingly wandered into Half-Zones?’
‘They broke the Five Laws of Contamination.’
‘They did not intend a non-compliance, sir. It was an act based purely on ignorance.’
‘You suggest I should release them?’
‘I suggest nothing, sir. I am merely stating the facts. There are loyal JT8s and Nex who were out of their jurisdiction because of the nature of the HATE biological weapon; it shifts on the wind and was able to infiltrate edges of the cities, using plant spores as organic carriers. Although the Nex and JT8s were not confined to their Lanes, they had unwittingly entered KillZones and I feel that—’
‘Kill them.’
‘Yes, sir. Out.’ Mace signed off and the screen went a terrible matt black; it reflected Durell’s contemplative expression for a moment before he turned and settled his gaze on Haven. Then he glanced over to the slim female Nex who stood, stoic and impassive, her sub-machine gun pointing down at the plush carpet.
‘Did we run the preliminary checks on Viktor Haven here?’
‘Yes,’ said the female Nex softly, her voice gentle and sexless.
‘And we found nothing?’
‘He is clean, although his ECube does condemn him as a Spiral terrorist purely by association.’
‘I know that,’ whispered Durell. ‘Any fool can read his Spiral Agency loyalties in his stance. But what does he truly know about the GRID? What does he know of EDEN? And what does he know about the Dreadnought constructions?’
Durell caught the glint in Haven’s eye.
‘So you do contain some knowledge. Take him to Mace for ... questioning.’ The Nex moved forward and placed a hand on Haven’s shoulder.
‘And Alexis?’
‘Yes?’ she purred tenderly, her copper-eyed gaze meeting Durell’s.
‘Come back quickly. I have another task for you.’
Durell sat in the darkness, curled on the settee and staring down over New York City. A few fires still burned from the riots earlier that day—but the disturbances had been crushed mercilessly by the JT police squads and Nex Assault Teams. Over five hundred people had died on the streets—and for what?
To wave their pathetic banners opposing the NEP. Voicing their petty concerns—in direct violation of Durell’s order. Orders highlighted and constantly transmitted on the entire range of vid channels, making it clear that opposition to the Nex Enhancement Programm
e was prohibited.
‘Democracy,’ he hissed. It had a lot to answer for, he thought.
Mace arrived, sliding into the darkness to stand in front of Durell. He looked agitated—an emotion that Durell rarely saw flickering across the fish-white face of his oldest and most loyal subject.
‘Durell, I have a question. A question based on, shall we say, an unreliable source.’ Durell nodded for Mace to continue, and the compact Nex’s finger lifted to rest gently against his narrow lips before he went on. ‘There is talk. Of a warhead—a super-weapon designed and built by Spiral when it ruled and stagnated in its decadent prime. Have you heard of this weapon?’
Durell tilted his head gently. ‘Where did you hear of this?’
‘From the lips of a dying REB. I persuaded her to release her knowledge before she ... unfortunately, my skills are not what they were—old age is creeping slowly into my limbs, and as a result I could not keep her at the brink of life with the steady hand I once possessed.’
Durell smiled. And nodded.
‘So it is true?’ persisted Mace.
‘Worse than true, my friend. Spiral created a weapon so devastating that if they were to initiate it against us, we would do well to survive the onslaught. Our Empire would be toppled. It is our only weakness.’ Durell’s voice had dropped to a low croon, his copper eyes glinting in the darkness.
‘Surely one warhead could not possibly pose such a threat? We have more than fifty armies. We have nuclear-blast-proof Sentinel Towers in nearly every city of the world. And even without Nex forces we now control the JT8s. Even as we speak, they forget their lives under the old rule. Soon we will be all they remember. The Old World will not only have died—it will have been extinguished. We have rewritten the past, Durell—cast it into shadows.’
‘The Warhead is not simply a warhead; it is Evolution Class. An EC Warhead is a machine, a prototype of the next generation of intelligent, self-sufficient, sentient weapons systems.’
‘Sentient?’
Durell’s eyes sparkled with the reflections of distant fires. A lone machine gun rattled. ‘The Evolution Warhead was a project locked in a development cycle from the same era as the QII and then QIII processors—it followed similar design pathways and used many modules from some of the same programmers who applied their skills to the QIII and, later, QIV systems. I did not think the project was ever completed—because, by its very nature, its design specifications seemed almost impossible. A wet dream of the weapon designers and the military generals.’
‘Tell me more,’ said Mace, with a barely suppressed shiver.
‘The Evolution Warhead was supposed to be a warhead that could have unlimited targets. Once released, it would be completely self-sufficient. It had battery cells that would last a century. It could increase and decrease its own mass and size by accumulation and dissemination of its structural polymorphing chassis. It could reduce its own size and act as a stealth missile, infiltrating anything down to a room-size target by using a discrete global positioning system—not a standard military GPS, but from its own individual mainframe. It could—on paper—distil elements from the air, the ground, the sea—and increase its own capacity for speed and destruction. Its chassis was a Shift Unit—it could change shape and purpose and construct its own detonation units, its own independent missiles from within itself, like a metal insect giving birth to a progeny of war and destruction. And it was sentient—it had a brain modelled on our previous Quantell technology. It could, ultimately, construct intelligent procedures. It could think for itself.’
‘But it was never created?’
‘No, I thought the project abandoned. Because ...’
‘Yes?’
Durell turned, his dark copper eyes glittering. ‘Because to create a weapon which could assimilate its own miniature but equally devastating nuclear missiles and rain them down like fire on a million chosen targets if so required; to create a machine so incredibly lethal to mankind that it was, in effect, a machine gun that would fire nuclear bombs—with the ability to destroy and destroy and destroy and never, ever stop; to create a weapon with unlimited capacity for detonation ... well, that would show the perverse nature of man, would it not? To build something guaranteed to wipe out the entire planet if it was deemed necessary?’
‘Our Sentinel Towers—they are resistant to nuclear blasts.’
‘The Evolution Warhead, once programmed, would analyse its target; it would detect our fail-safes, shed its skin like a serpent, infiltrate the tower and detonate from within. Let me ask you: would one of our Sentinel Towers survive a nuclear explosion that went off inside?’
‘They are only braced for impact from outside. But then, this is not a problem—because this warhead does not exist... yes?’
‘If it does not exist, why are the REBS talking about it?’
‘Propaganda? A boost to the morale of a dying unit? Every religion needs its Holy Grail.’
‘And what if the Holy Grail really did exist?’
‘The power for immortality?’
‘Immortality and immortal destruction.’
‘I’ll get some people on it,’ whispered Mace.
‘Use the best,’ said Durell, returning to gaze out over New York. He surveyed the rubble, the destruction. ‘I don’t like nasty surprises. And I don’t want to find the Evolution Class Warhead knocking on our back door with my name at the forefront of its digital mind.’
An hour later, the trouble outside had ceased and New York was finally calm.
A door opened on silent hinges, allowing a tiny triangle of yellow light to spill onto the thick carpet. A figure stepped in, and Durell’s slitted copper eyes narrowed for a moment as he recognised the silhouette of Alexis.
I need this, he thought.
She closed the door behind her and moved forward, bare feet padding across the carpet. In the gloom Durell could see she still wore her tight body-hugging black uniform. Her copper eyes moved, focused, came to rest on Durell’s impassive face.
Durell studied her pale oval face as, without a sound, Alexis peeled off her tight uniform and stood with legs slightly apart, arms limp by her sides, fingers flexing slowly as if in anticipation of battle. He noted the hint of moisture on her pastel lips, and the short panting breaths—gentle, almost unheard, but hinting at her deep and desperate need.
Durell’s gaze dropped, past Alexis’s lifted chin and to the pale skin of her throat, and the small but perfectly rounded breasts. Then lower, his stare moving over her flat stomach and to the black glistening scales which began at the top of her vagina where her pubis gave way to armoured scaling which spiralled and scattered down across her groin and inner thighs. It tightened again into armoured panels which ran in twin glistening strips down the back of her legs to end in sharp points of insect chitin just above her heels.
Durell’s appreciative gaze lifted, following the trail of tiny armoured scales, most black but several glistening with oil-slick rainbow hues. The smell of Alexis’s Nex flesh prickled his nostrils, her scent mingling with his own and forming a natural perfumed bond as Durell finally moved and rose from the settee.
Behind the two, the city glittered. Fire erupted occasionally. A large CityScreen atop a skyscraper flickered with images of LVA, then modern KT weapons, then the NEP in an attempt at enticing normal, everyday people into the joyous union of becoming ... Nex.
The ultimate warrior.
The ultimate soldier.
Protectors of freedom.
Upholders of truth and law and order ...
You know it makes sense ...
‘You wanted me, sir?’ breathed Alexis, her voice soft, husky, her eyes dipping a little as Durell’s dark armoured claw came up to cup her chin. Her eyes lifted to meet his stare and he marked the strength there: the incredible, awesome physical power which she held tightly in check.
Alexis: Durell’s finest Nex assassin, Durell’s most awesome general in this bright new world.
‘Yes,’ he sa
id, his deformed face smiling softly, pallets of chitinous armour sliding across his cheeks under glowing slitted copper eyes. He moved forward a little, felt her body lift towards his—as if offering herself in eager anticipation. ‘And I think you need me as much as I need you.’ It was not a question.
‘It has been a while,’ she soothed, stepping in close as her arms slid neatly inside his heavy rustling robes, moving over the contours of his armoured flanks and to the soft, supple human skin of his back. He tensed for a moment—as he always did—and then slowly relaxed as her long fingers soothed patterns of tenderness across his skin. Durell’s head dropped, and Alexis’s tongue flickered out, tracing a trail across the hard scales of his deformed face and then sliding into the small round hole of his mouth. Their tongues entwined and danced, hers a moist writhing muscle reminiscent of the human from which she was joined, his a black triangulated stump riddled with thick black hairs that prickled like sharp wires. Their tongues mated, Durell’s hairs tickling Alexis’s mucous surface roughly and drawing tiny pin-pricks of blood.
Durell shrugged and his robes fell back, leaving him naked. He moved, stooping with crackles of his armoured spine to lift Alexis so that her feet left the carpet, their mouths still joined in a tender lover’s caress, her taut breasts brushing against his cool slick armour, erect nipples leaving wet oozing trails of grey mammary milk against the protective chemical gel that coated Durell’s armour like a liquid exoskeleton veil.
Alexis groaned, a deep low animal sound, and pressed herself into Durell. He turned, bearing her down to the settee, armoured forearms leaving grooves in the leather as his claws came up and ran gently through her short black spiked hair. Alexis’s legs opened, spirals of protective armour scattering from her cunt to reveal a dark honeyed opening, glistening with pink and blood red and corkscrew trails of bright green as her legs came up and over Durell’s hips. Jagged ridges of plate-chitin poked into Alexis’s calves and as Durell kissed her once more, his tiny triangular tongue darting into her mouth and leaving trails of acid, her long white fingers danced down his chest and across his flat, powerfully muscled abdomen and to the flat area between his legs. She gently prised apart the armoured shields and pushed her fingers inside him, into the pocket of thick gel, feeling his slick penis suddenly flex in her hands, tiny rippling spikes driving like needles into her flesh and drawing blood in twenty different places. She felt the injection of hormones from him, felt his pulsating penis suddenly swell and burst free of his shell and she gazed down lovingly at the throbbing black and purple shaft between her blood-trickling hands. Her head snapped up then, tongue darting to moisten her lips as her breath came in short, eager gasps, copper eyes glistening as one of her hands reached behind him and pulled Durell towards her lust.