by Andy Remic
Carter worked his bottle into the sand, then fished out the silver alloy ECube. It glinted dully in the rays of the fast-falling sun. He toyed with it briefly.
‘I’ll come with you, if you like.’
Carter met Ed’s gaze. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Back-up? Mate, I am a fucking mean shot with a Barrett. Can’t say I’ll charge into the action—a gammy leg, you understand—but any Nex sneaking up behind you is guaranteed a .338mm round up the arse.’
Carter sighed—seemed to deflate. He stroked Samson’s velvet ears and looked out to the sea once more, then activated the ECube. It glittered with blue digits. He smoothed a pattern across the surface and there came a tiny blip.
Carter flicked his cigarette end towards the sea; it landed on the rocks, glowing briefly before dying.
‘You made a decision?’
Carter thought about his friends, thought about the many battles he had waged against the Nex—and against Durell—as a Spiral operative. He thought about Jam, about Natasha, thought about his son, Joseph. And, finally, he pictured the dead eyes of Tomas—an old man just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘I’ll do it,’ he whispered, and closed his eyes against the rays of the setting sun.
AN INTERLUDE:
PROLOGUE TO THE CHAINSTATIONS
The Cobra-S lifted on a cold cushion of LVA fumes as it left behind a desolate, barren landscape. A cold wind was blowing, scattering the fine exhaust fumes as the Cobra-S lifted its nose and climbed steadily into a cold blue sky trailing streamers of broken cloud.
Behind lay the distant devastated skeleton of New York.
Ahead lay the eighth Dreadnought.
It had begun as a cooperative project between NASA, the RFST and CRSA upon the discovery of a technology which would simplify and ease the myriad problems of construction in space—in terms of scale, materials and finance. The new technology was a machine grandly entitled a Gravity Displacer. No larger than a football, it could specify digital global parameters and neutralise gravity, in effect creating a specific area which contained zero gravity for the duration of a construction. Normal gravity would persist in and around the building zone itself—but the actual structure would, in effect, be weightless. Like a ten-million-tonne helium balloon.
In this manner, the first of the Dreadnought construction blocks had been fashioned. People gathered on the ground beneath in their tens of thousands to gawp open-mouthed at this eighth wonder of the world—hanging solid and immovable and matt black against the glowing backdrop of the sky.
The size of a seventy-five-storey tower block which had been flipped onto its side, the BCB construct hung solid and cold, a skyscraper slab painted against the heavens, suspended by the digital precision of a GD in its own parameter fields of weightlessness.
Helicopters and fast Manta Shuttles ferried personnel and building materials, news crews and ASP workers to and from the suspended building block as work on it was, over a period of months, completed. News programmes ran features in solid rotation, along with advertisements for ChainStations—a New World For a New Tomorrow, and LVA — the Fuel For a New Space Age.
Just as interest started to wane, and the crowds of techno-tourists drifted apart, the first freight tug using its own tiny onboard GD was put into service. The long, vaguely doughnut-shaped vehicle had hooked up to the BCB construct and, with flashes of silver and violet across the darkened evening sky, the Gravity Displacer fashioned a tunnel through which the freight tug towed the enormous building block—up past the Earth’s atmospheric influences and out into the dark expanses of space.
With this first ChainStation building block in place and actively operational, the Accelerated Space Programme had thrown massive funding into the project, buoyed by success and public support—especially in the wake of the HATE outbreak which, in effect, imprisoned the majority of the world’s population in the cities, those desolate half-destroyed concrete wildernesses.
Six months after the initial success of the first BCB construct, another six units had been tugged down their Anti-G tunnels and into the darkness of space, looking down upon the glowing sun-bright orb which had spawned them.
Now the ASP was actively developing another ninety-four BCB units globally. They would, within three to six months, join their cousins circling the Earth to create the first-ever ChainStation: a promise of escape for those tortured souls who were sick of the ever-present threat of HATE and toxic disintegration ... a promise of a New Future, a New World.
The Cobra-S accelerated silently towards Dreadnoughts, which hung immobile and strangely silent in the cold gloom of the dawn. Rain was falling gently around the sleek craft as it banked, the huge black tower block half enshrouded in thick drifting clouds that filled the craft’s scanners which issued mid-prox warnings with low-level bleat sirens.
The Cobra-S pulled alongside the huge black construct so that it was cruising a parallel course and the pilot glanced out to his right—through the fine mist—and thought he saw a slight resonance.
The BCB vibrating; so delicately and so quickly that it was hard to see as more than a barely visible vibration. But it was there, evidence of the GD field which held this ten-million-tonne block of space station in temporary stasis.
The Cobra-S slowed and then turned, hovering with tiny hisses of cold matrix exhaust. In the blank black surface of the BCB a huge portal slid into itself, fine spirals of metal rotating to reveal a circular hollow punctuating the zero-gravity field. The Cobra-S slid into the opening and the slivers of alloy closed neatly behind it, leaving nothing but a fine mist and a grey, upwards-falling rain.
There came a huge crash as the freight tug engaged with the BCB construct; engines screamed and the TitaniumIV thread-chains went from slack to taut as the tug shunted sideways, taking its position.
Computers hummed, altering Gravity Displacement coordinates, and then, slowly, the tug started to pull the mammoth Dreadnought across the sky.
Below, thousands of people turned aside from their daily chores. They watched in awe as the tower block lying on its side, impossibly huge, at first crawled and then accelerated away into the distance. It gained altitude in a broad upsweeping arc until it was climbing vertically—until the freight tug finally released its chains as great swinging slack pendulums and the GD motors whined down as the BCB construct was shunted into a precise orbit around the Earth.
The tug’s work was far from over. Several miles away, seven Dreadnoughts had already been linked—by floating, undulating ChainLink Corridors, so that seven Dreadnoughts formed huge tower-block couplings in the ChainStation set-up as a whole. Even now, lights flickered across the vast expanses of these primary test modules—and plans were being finalised in boardrooms and laboratories for the newly planned NG Units: BCBs a hundred times larger than the skyscraper construct units currently being tested. A billion diagnostic tests were run through, with checks and counter-checks.
This proto-chain was the first stepping stone to the ChainStation as a real entity. A new synthetic world. It was the first toddler footstep of an unsteady mankind—or, at least, Nexkind—towards the conquest of the solar system and the stars far beyond.
ADVERTISING FEATURE
The TV-ProjU sparkled into life with a digital buzz of humming phosphorescence. Images spun and leapt, dissolving and then reanimating into the mercury logo of HIVE Media Productions ...
[deep male voice]
—A normal working weekday, with normal everyday people travelling to their places of business, of fun, of productivity.
Scene pans slowly to: an ordinary city street. Normal people are striding on their way to work when suddenly a deafening crack echoes across the world and the street shakes—
Audio:
—A backdrop of echoes and a metallic rumbling reminiscent of a devastating earthquake.
[deep male voice]
Beneath this world, beneath this normality lurks a danger so terrible that it coul
d rip apart the very fabric of our whole universe ...
Scene zooms quickly to: a man’s face, which suddenly explodes into ravioli-like sachets of flesh rushing out towards the camera, shooting past the lens in a shower of liquid meat—and as we zoom through the fine mist of blood and slowly spinning brain globules, the everyday city scene has been turned into a vision of HELL. Bodies lie battered and broken; men, women and children sprawl on the pavement and the roadway, limbs missing, trailing streaks of gore to the slick layer of blood which coats everything in a shining new gloss.
Audio:
—Screams echo.
—Women weep for children.
—Children sob for parents.
—And a terrible final silence descends.
Screen fades to black; TEXT [scrolling L > R/ silver lettering FONT LUCIDA SANS]: SPIRAL are a group of rogue soldiers working throughout the world to bring down your New World Government—the very World Government which saved YOU from the biological horrors of the HATE biological virus and the accidentally detonated military nuclear warheads. SPIRAL kill indiscriminately in their war of terror. EVERYBODY out there has the potential to discover a SPIRAL agent ... EVERYBODY out there has a duty to their fellow men, women and children—a duty to wipe this FILTH from the planet. Do the RIGHT thing, call the NEX AGENCY NOW! on 0999 999 999 or text/cube your information. All information is treated in the strictest confidence.
Audio:
—Soft violin music; a haunting and harrowing solo, lilting and gentle.
—DON’T BE AFRAID—PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN AND OUR MODERN WORLD ... HELP THE NEX ANTI-SPIRAL UNITS TO HELP YOU—HELP THE NEX TO RIGHT THIS TERRIBLE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF WRONG.
SCENE DISSOLVES TO SILVER
CHAPTER 4
ASSASSINATION
The low sleek alloy Manta skimmed over the churning waves, spray spitting up over the cockpit, the speed filling Carter with exhilaration and a sense of freedom.
As dawn broke the Manta banked right, heading north. Carter’s euphoria gave way to a sense of foreboding. Nicky had smiled and nodded, filling him with the reassurances he needed; she had taken Joseph in her arms, his head snuggling to her chest as he fell instantly into a deep sleep. She had smiled, as if to say, ‘There, you see?’ Carter had reluctantly thrown his pack into the black craft and used the recessed steps to mount up into the cockpit—closely followed by Ed in his worn old GPs.
‘Now, you look after my little boy,’ Carter had called down.
‘Just get out of here and save your friends ... Jesus, if you can’t trust Joseph with me, then you can’t trust him with anybody!’
Carter nodded, closed the cockpit canopy, and within a minute was airborne and screaming low over the Med.
Now, heading inland and with the weather turning bleaker and wilder by the minute, Carter thought back to that conversation and his own deep-rooted suspicions born from the loss of love: the loss of his Natasha, Joseph’s mother.
‘You OK?’ came Ed’s gravelled voice from the copilot’s seat behind.
‘Yeah. Just worried about my boy.’
‘He’ll do fine, Carter. It’s yourself you should be worried about. This is no easy gig.’
‘Yeah, London fucking gangland with a wanted face like mine. All I need. Maybe I should paint my arse orange and stand on top of Big Ben! I’m sure that would present a less obvious target.’
They swept low over rain-drenched forests and rolling fields through the gloomy autumn ice-light. Below, nothing moved—no man, woman or child could be seen, no cars on the roads, no pedestrians standing on pavements and staring up as the Manta cruised past.
Occasionally they spotted—on the radar or ECscans—columns of armoured vehicles; Nex-led convoys of tanks and FukTruks, usually ferrying infantry across the countryside that had become a desolate wilderness.
HATE had seen to that.
A wonder of military, biological and chemical design, the HATE virus—when released over non-urban areas—would spread to the concrete outskirts of major towns and cities, killing all in its path. In effect, it would force populations into heavily built-up conurbations — herding humans (and certain types of animal) into areas where they could be either easily policed or easily exterminated.
HATE, invented by a team of American, British, Russian, Japanese and German military scientists, had ironically been used by Durell against the very people whom it had been developed to protect.
Spiral operatives maintained their freedom of movement through this poisoned world by the use of Spiral-developed anti-HATE drugs. But as with any drug that altered an organism’s responses, there were side effects. And this resistance to Durell’s grand scheme gave the Nex an even greater need to exterminate the seemingly perpetual thorn in their side: Spiral.
Carter lowered the Manta on a whine of engines, and then skimmed the top of a huge, sprawling, rain-drenched pine forest, sweeping up over a massive hillside and banking past an old stone Bavarian castle mounted on a narrow rocky outcropping.
Carter’s mind started to settle itself, readying for the confrontation he knew was to come. He breathed deeply, watching the rolling forests undulating beneath him. They crossed a river swollen by heavy rainfall... then flew low over a deserted German village, the desolate streets empty except for a few rusting, overturned cars. Occasionally Carter caught a glimpse of skeletons squatting in corners, huddled in wet torn clothing, bones picked clean by scavengers. Carter shivered in the confines of the Manta’s cockpit.
A ghost town, he thought.
HATE did its job well...
‘Yeah, but never well enough,’ came Kade’s bitter words.
‘Why don’t you just fuck off and die?’
Kade chuckled, a bone-rattling sound filled with lead and toxins. ‘Never in your lifetime compadre—Brother, Father, Son and Holy fucking Ghost. We are together. Merged and bonded into One. For now and for all eternity ... or until we crumble into dust. Amen.’’
Carter’s dark, sombre eyes stared steadily ahead through the gloom. He severed the connection.
Carter landed on the outskirts of London, in a park beside a river. The distant skyline was a ravaged silhouette of broken buildings; the relics of the nuclear blast five years earlier.
A SmutCar—an old rusting black Range Rover which had had the roof cut free with a Stihlsaw and sported folded, jagged edges—was waiting patiently for the two men; just as Nicky had promised. Carter landed the Manta and climbed free of its warmth and into the chilly London air. Ed followed, shouldering the soft case containing his Russian Dragunov SVD sniper rifle with its PSO-1 telescopic sight, and carrying an M27 carbine in his tattooed hands. His face was set, blue eyes focused on the job that had to be done.
Carter moved warily to the Range Rover, checking inside and out—mainly for bombs. He palmed the key and slid it into the ignition as Ed scanned the area. The powerful Perkins 7.2 diesel fired after a few spins of the starter, and black fumes belched from the triple exhaust pipes. Carter slid into the damp rain-slick seat and fixed his eyes on the distant remains of the capital. Even from this distance he could make out the war-torn features; the crumbling, bombarded, bullet-riddled buildings.
‘We’re clear,’ said Ed softly, climbing in beside Carter. ‘Too much chance of contracting HATE out here—looks like the people have defined their own borders.’
‘It’s still classed as a KillZone,’ said Carter. ‘If the fucking Nex see us they’ll open fire without question.’
‘Yeah, but if they see your face, mate, they’ll open fire anyway. You’re a wanted man.’
‘Good point. You fill me with supreme confidence.’
‘That’s why I’m here.’ Ed grinned, slapping Carter on the back.
Carter nudged the old tiptronic into first and stomped the accelerator pedal. The Range Rover wheel-spun across loose stones, bit tarmac and shot down past the edges of the tree-lined park with its black wrought-iron fences. They disappeared into the narrow, shadowed confines of a
deserted huddle of Victorian terraced buildings.
They drove slowly through a light fall of rain threatening to become snow, tyres crunching rubble, eyes watching warily the people who moved along the pavements.
They cruised past several groups of JT8s, black-clad and wearing alloy and plastic gas-masks. Occasionally, their heads kept low, the two men rumbled past a squad of Nex—but the authorities seemed uninterested in this old SmutCar with its two anonymous-looking occupants.
The atmosphere in London was bad; it was wrong.
Something nasty was going down.
‘Roadblock,’ said Ed softly.
‘I see it.’
They slowed, caught in a crawling queue of traffic moving towards Covent Garden. The rain turned to snow and swirled in the gently moaning wind. The quality of the light seemed to become subdued.
‘Shall we ditch the car?’
‘We’re too close to them now; they’ve probably tagged us,’ said Carter softly. ‘We’ll have to chance it.’
They moved on, closer and closer to the checkpoint. Carter pulled his collar up as snow settled across his shoulders and head and into the Range Rover’s damp interior. He allowed the snow to build, disguising the colour of his hair. As they reached the checkpoint—a temporary construction fashioned from sandbags and concrete-filled oil drums, and protected by two GAU 19/A Gatling-type three-barrelled machine guns that fired .50 Browning cartridges and were capable of putting down two thousand rounds per minute—the Nex waved the Range Rover through with only a cursory glance at the occupants.