Warhead

by Andy Remic

  ‘God save their souls,’ said Constanza softly.

  ‘Yeah,’ snapped Carter. ‘Because no other cunt will.’

  It took them another hour to reach the bunker where the aircraft were kept. Various code-locked doors had been buckled and bent, and inside several Mantas had been partially dismantled—as if somebody had been trying to escape but couldn’t get the vehicles to work.

  Carter’s heart sank as he saw the destroyed fighter planes, and his gaze swept over the devastation of the yellow-lit chamber. He glanced at Constanza, bitter words springing to his lips. But she pointed hurriedly, recognising the beginnings of his fury. ‘Through there! There’s more.’

  Carter led the way, through a narrow tunnel and out—

  Into fresh air. Carter breathed deeply as daylight flooded his world, and the mountain air filled his lungs with its purity.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Halfway up a mountain,’ said Constanza. She smiled then, her face looking suddenly young and pretty. Carter could see the years drop away from her, could see the signs of the stress evaporate. ‘The Nex haven’t spotted it—there’s a GRID curtain. Hides the entrance from prying eyes, but it’s still easily accessible from both directions. We can get out—if you can start the damned aircraft, that is.’

  Carter glanced over at the mountain’s internal landing bay. There were thirty Mantas, most of them covered by tarpaulins. Missiles gleamed along their flanks.

  ‘It feels good to be alive,’ Carter said suddenly.

  ‘There always somebody worse off than yourself,’ said Mongrel philosophically. He fished out a chocolate bar and began to chew, savouring the view as he contemplated his recent experiences.

  ‘I am, quite frankly, amazed that you can still eat,’ said Carter.

  ‘Yeah, but what I could really murder is a big pan of B&S!’

  ‘Beans and sausage? At a time like this? You are fucking insane!’

  Mongrel considered this, then tilted his head and gave Carter a stern look. ‘Some of them zombies,’ he said, ‘they were bigger zombies than me. But I thought, I did, I thought: you big zombie, but you out of shape, and I do this as full-time job.’ Mongrel grinned a chocolate-smeared grin and breathed deep of the mountain air. A breeze ruffled his tufted excuse for a haircut. ‘A pus-filled zombie should not destroy a man’s appetite. Or, by pizda, I not true solider.’

  ‘Mongrel, they were not zombies,’ said Constanza. ‘They were innocent unfortunates; victims of a toxic war who were left behind.’

  ‘Once you cross frontier of sanity, you no longer human,’ said Mongrel gently. He placed his big spade hand on Constanza’s shoulder. ‘Those things back there—they not people you once knew. They not men and women of Spiral ... their minds dead. Only their rotting flesh remained—flesh without soul. You understand, little lady?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed, lowering her head.

  ‘We thought you mad!’ laughed Mongrel. ‘Hanging out with all those cannibal loonies!’

  ‘Not mad,’ said Constanza, closing her eyes and allowing tears to roll down her cheeks. ‘Just desperate to survive. Sometimes the world makes you hard, yeah? And it changes you, Mongrel. It turns you into something you are really not.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Mongrel hugged her then, and a long look of understanding passed between them. Mongrel’s touch lingered just a little longer than it should have. Their eye contact lasted just a little longer than it should have. And Mongrel’s smile was too warm, too friendly, just too fucking nice.

  Carter groaned, and wandered towards the edge of the mountain. He breathed deeply again, looking out over Tibet. This whole country, he thought, fills me with exhilaration—this whole world is sheer magnificence!

  ‘Carter?’ Carter managed to find a bedraggled cigarette in his pack. He rummaged for a lighter, cursing the confusion of his packing, and finally resorted to the laser function of his ECube—not something the tiny four-billion-dollar device was designed for but still a welcome addition. He inhaled deeply on the nicotine fix.

  ‘Yeah, Mongrel?’

  ‘I think we need move quickly. Those Nex, they surely not far behind.’

  ‘OK. You two lovebirds happy now?’

  ‘What?’ Mongrel frowned deeply.

  Carter winked, and nudged Mongrel in the ribs. ‘I saw it, you fucking old goat. I saw that give-away pyramid crotch. You’ve got the fucking hunger for that chick.’

  ‘Mongrel not know what crazy Carter talking about,’ said Mongrel, somewhat primly. ‘I just assisting wounded and scared lady, showing her utmost chiv— ... chilav— … honour. You talking crazy talk, Carter, and I think you been breathing too much of those tox fumes down there!’

  ‘A good attempt.’ Carter grinned, drawing on his cigarette.

  ‘No! I must protest!’

  ‘You must protest?’ cackled Carter. ‘What are you, Victorian fucking Mongrel all of a sudden? Weren’t you in mat movie Lady Chatterley’s Mongrel? Or maybe you marred in The French Lieutenant’s Mongrel? Or, may one be so bold as to ask, could you possibly be one of the leads from that Dickensian masterpiece A Tale of Two Mongrels?’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Carter grinned. ‘Come on, let’s get the Manta started.’

  ‘Just fuck off.’

  ‘Aww, Mongrel, don’t be like that! We’ve been through so much together!’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Chuckling, smoke pluming behind him, Carter strode to the nearest Manta and hauled the tarpaulin free. There, under a thin layer of grease, sat a brand new jet, squat, powerful, and looking like the serious piece of military hardware that it was.

  ‘So, then, Constanza, where we going? This exchange deal of ours, it’s going to need navigational coordinates. Or do you intend to point us through the skies with your finger?’

  ‘No, Carter. I have the coordinates. I have the exact coordinates for the location of the Evolution Class Warhead—all stored up here, in my pretty little head.’

  Mongrel moved towards Constanza. ‘You ignore old Carter, he always bastard grump on mission. He always whining and moaning!’ Mongrel gave Carter a shifty sideways smile. ‘It like being on fucking mission with your wife! Har har.’

  Really got to you, didn’t I? Carter thought, climbing up the recessed steps and peering into the cockpit. He reached down and turned on the power. Inside, the Manta’s control panel lit up in a display of glittering colours. It gave Carter a warm, glowing feeling inside.

  The fighter aircraft seemed to say: Welcome Home.

  Carter piloted the Manta low over the smooth blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Sunlight glimmered from the silver crests of small waves and the low-flying Manta left a trail of foam surging in its screaming wake.

  After leaving the southern tip of India, Carter, Mongrel and Constanza had a straight flight of just over 8,000 klicks to the coastline of Antarctica. A Manta could be cranked up to just over Mach 2.2 or 2,330 km/h so their journey time was going to be around four hours flat out. And Carter was certainly pushing flat out—time was of the essence, and God only knew to what stage of his plans Durell had progressed by now.

  Mongrel and Constanza chatted intermittently as Carter flew. But Carter himself sank into a mental tomb world as he mulled over the recent events which had left him so battered and bruised that every time he moved it was agony. Until the adrenalin arrived; until Kade arrived.

  For years, Kade had professed to soak up Carter’s pain like a sponge, allowing the Spiral operative to push on regardless when most other men and women were left behind, whimpering in the mud.

  Once again, Carter found himself mulling over the very concept of Kade. Kade: his internal demon.

  Kade: his dark and violent brother.

  What was it that Constanza had said? ‘We have met, Carter. That’s why I know about Kade—that’s why I know about the demon nestling inside your skull.’ And yet Carter was sure that he would have remembered the woman; remembered that face, that
athletic figure, that smile. Carter was good with faces ... it was names that eluded him. Usually the names of the dead.

  A hundred times Carter had opened his mouth to ask the question, and a hundred times he had closed it again. How do you know me? How do you know about Kade? But something stopped Carter; something clicked at the back of his skull, snicking into place and halting him.

  What seemed like aeons ago, there had been a wise old soldier working with the Spiral DemolSquads. His name had been Ranger and he’d been a mighty grey-bearded warrior with an incredible reputation and the physique of a true athlete; a true gladiator. Carter had been young, newly acquired, fresh-faced and filled with optimism as he was drawn into the swelling ranks of Spiral. One evening, after a few pints down at the local NAAFI, Ranger had gathered some of the newcomers into a corner and they had talked in quiet voices, laughing often as Ranger regaled them with accounts of his heroic adventures; the old man was a born storyteller. But he had given them one piece of valuable advice which had stuck with Carter to this very day:

  If you don’t want answers, then don’t ask questions.

  And, when it came down to it, Carter, in his heart, in his soul, didn’t want to know about Kade. He didn’t want to give himself any false hope.

  The Manta powered on towards Antarctica. A coastline of ice rose ahead of the trio. The sea looked glass-black below them, strewn with titanic chunks of ice and crashing wildly back and forth.

  Huge sheer black cliffs sheathed in gleaming crusts of ice towered up. The Manta’s nose lifted, the fighter whining as it rose above sharp shards of rock and then dropped again to the white plateau far beneath, cruising low, huge storms of snow spraying up and out in the aircraft’s wake.

  They hurtled through seemingly bottomless canyons where sunlight sparkled from walls of sculpted ice. They flew over mighty mountain ranges. A matt black arrow, they smashed through blindingly white blizzards.

  Then, finally, Constanza pointed to Mongrel’s ECube. ‘ETA five minutes,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope the air defences spot this as a Spiral craft.’

  ‘As a ...’ Carter glanced back at the dark-haired woman. Her golden-eyed gaze met his. ‘You mean they have intelligent targeting systems?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How you know?’ muttered Mongrel.

  ‘Because I programmed them. Now, keep to an altitude of three hundred feet; they get a better scan at that height. Don’t want them mistaking us for Nex, do we?’

  ‘Are the systems powerful?’

  ‘The best in the world,’ said Constanza softly. ‘That’s why the Nex haven’t found the Warhead. And there are also internal systems—anti-Nex intrusion filters powered by lasers. Any Nex who has discovered it is now just ash drifting against the snowfields.’

  Carter modified his altitude, slowing the Manta’s speed again. Then he banked, tracking coordinates.

  ‘Down there!’ But none of the three could see the Antarctic Spiral base; it was obscured by a snowstorm, concealed by its natural ally.

  Carter landed the Manta blind, breath catching in his throat as they approached what Constanza assured him was the short runway. The Manta slammed onto and over the hard-packed snow, taxiing to an abrupt halt as Carter threw the engines into reverse thrust with a blast of superheated exhaust that turned the snow to steam. He killed the engines, and they sat there in silence for a while.

  ‘This is it, Carter lad,’ said Mongrel, the first, as usual, to break the silence. To Mongrel, silence was heresy.

  Carter peered out into the snowstorm. Squinting, he could just make out a vague shape, like a high grey wall, but dismissed it as only a shadow. They wrapped up as best they could in the confines of the Manta, then Carter slammed open the cockpit canopy and got a blast of snow and wind in the face. He gasped, blinking rapidly, then clambered down the recessed ladder and jumped into the snow. Constanza followed, and finally Mongrel, who closed the canopy behind him. Hydraulics hissed, and there was the precise chunk of a well-engineered machine.

  ‘This way.’ Constanza walked through the snow, and Mongrel and Carter followed. Carter nudged Mongrel. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re watching her arse.’

  ‘No, I not!’ Aghast.

  ‘Yes, you are. I’m following your line of sight. It’s her rump. You’re staring at her buttocks.’

  ‘I happening to admire tailoring at back of her fleece. Fine stitching, I thinking. But she does have first-rate, well-formed and ample backside—I sure. But look, you can see triple cross-back stitching on jacket—there. Perfect couture.’

  ‘Yeah, ‘course it is, Mongrel. Look, why don’t you say something to her?’

  ‘Like what?’ hissed Mongrel, eyes wild for a moment. ‘I fancy you, fancy a bit of the old rumpy-pumpy, but hey, I old, and fat, and nearly toothless, and tufted. I have cancer that will soon kill me, and maybe we all die any day now anyway when Durell piss his tox all over us. Can I take you to movie?’ Mongrel was spitting in his passion to speak, and his huge fists had clenched—an unspoken warning.

  ‘All those reasons are exactly why you should tell her.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  ‘Carter, you is assassin and damn fine bomb-maker. But agony aunt you is not.’

  Carter shrugged, increasing his speed to catch up with Constanza. Then all three halted as a high wall loomed out of the mist, a rearing grey-stone edifice seventy or eighty feet high. It was topped with small crenellations, like a castle—but the intensity of the snowstorm prevented them from looking further along the structure.

  Constanza huddled against the door. A secret panel slid free and she punched in digits. A portal swung inwards, and the three tumbled through into a suddenly calm if dark haven. They were all glad to be out of the howling wind, the flesh-slapping snow.

  The portal closed, muffling the banshee howls, and they stood there in darkness for a moment, snow drifting from hair and shoulders, shivering as something in the darkness clicked. Lights flickered on, dim and feeble.

  ‘Welcoming,’ observed Mongrel.

  ‘It’s a disused military base, not a brothel,’ said Carter, gazing around at the bare breeze-block walls and the concrete-section floor. It seemed suspiciously low-tech.

  ‘Shh!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You not talk of such things in front of lady,’ Mongrel admonished. Constanza gave him a beaming smile, then moved through the chamber to another door up ahead. She punched in more digits, and they entered a circular tunnel of tarnished alloy. Hoisting packs, they trudged along, their boots making echoing thumping sounds. They could smell hot oil. Tiny flickers of amber light jostled across the walls occasionally, and then they were free of the tunnel and into another concrete and stone chamber.

  ‘The decontamination sheds are up ahead.’

  ‘Because you have to create the AI and RI chips in a hermetically sealed environment?’ Carter was rolling his neck to relieve tension; pain was a constant, throbbing reminder that, like it or not, he was still alive. The game was far from done.

  ‘Yeah, we don’t want to risk any pollutants sending a fifty-billion-dollar polymorphic missile up the wrong dictatorial arse.’

  ‘This ECW. You sure it will still be working?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Constanza. ‘This whole base may look disused, but it is operational. And it was built to last. Out here, the ice and snow moves; it is unstable. The Castle in its entirety is built on a series of hydraulic mobile support stanchions directed by simple AI algorithms; it can shift itself, redistribute its weight, put down extra supports deep into the ice. It is self-regulating, self-stabilising. No earthquake can destroy it, and certainly no shift in the ice can rip it apart.’

  ‘The Castle?’ asked Mongrel.

  ‘A nickname. Because of the turrets. When you see the place in calm weather, not in a storm, you’ll realise that it’s nothing like a castle; we were just fond of the term. Made it feel more like home. Although, a bit like old ston
e castles and their ballistic defences, there are a series of rail-driven mounted machine guns up on the roof.’

  ‘In case of massed polar bear assault?’ Mongrel asked.

  Constanza patted Mongrel on the arm, and he beamed—like a schoolboy in love. ‘No, Mongrel. They’re there because this whole area has awesome air defences, and when awesome air defences are present there is a much higher possibility of infantry and tank attack. The MGs have anti-tank capabilities with TI-uranium rounds in yellow-tagged ammunition belts. Just so you know. Anyway, you don’t get polar bears down here. They’re strictly Arctic Circle beasts.’

  ‘You think we get company?’

  Constanza nodded. ‘The Nex are onto us. And if they discover where we are heading ... well, I am sure Durell must know something about the EC Warhead. That bastard has a finger in too many pies.’

  ‘If he try to finger my pie, then I bite it off.’

  ‘You’re a brave man, Mongrel.’ Constanza smiled up at him.

  Mongrel puffed out his chest. ‘You better believe it, ma’am.’

  After the decontamination sheds, Constanza headed for the central ECW Core—where it would take her fifteen minutes just to get through the coded security doors. And so, Mongrel being Mongrel, he had insisted on making a brew before following the woman down the long corridor to the Core. Carter waited with him, a cigarette in one hand, a weary grin on his face masking the constant worry of their imminent countdown to extinction. Mongrel, standing beside a small sink with his portable kettle, dropped three tea bags into tin mugs and stirred in hot water. As he brewed, he glanced back and frowned at Carter.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Carter, still grinning.

  ‘What?

  ‘Nothing, ma’am.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Temper!’

  ‘Cunt.’

  ‘Tsch. There are ladies present. Or nearby. Even if they are semi-insane wannabe cannibals. Fuck, Mongrel, you really do know how to choose the nutcases!’

  ‘This nothing,’ grunted Mongrel. ‘Wait until you hear about Fat Chick Night! The corned beef! The doughnuts! The horror!’