Warhead

by Andy Remic

  There were no burns.

  Carter flexed his fingers thankfully. Below he could hear machine guns firing and tank guns booming.

  Aircraft screamed overhead while missiles detonated with deafening roars. War was raging.

  Armageddon was here.

  Carter turned to Alexis. ‘Take me to the QIV,’ he said.

  They moved down a ramp and through a wide corridor lined with computers and cables. Beneath their feet rattled metal grilles that revealed another level, and levels beyond that as they fell and dropped away for many metres below. Carter stared down, entranced. He could see perhaps forty floors, and it made him feel giddy.

  ‘This is the control room.’

  They entered a huge chamber, full of the highest-grade products of computing technology; many large black control screens lined the walls and stood on independent pedestals. Several of the screens showed flickering bright images; one displayed a representation of the Evolution Class Warhead.

  It was hammering low over an ocean, and the vision panned out to display a thousand newly birthed missiles following like children. All were laden with the high-grade military anti-human poison called EDEN. These were the ECW’s brood. Its molecular creations. Its offspring.

  ‘It has replicated?’ asked Carter slowly.

  ‘Yes. It has created its own army of warheads. That is why this machine is so intrinsically dangerous. It’s not just a simple bomb that hits a target and detonates. This is a machine created to wreak death and destruction on a truly global scale.’

  Carter moved to a small alloy case on a desk. There sat a dark cube which glistened with frost. Carter stared at the QIV processor—it was identical to its previous incarnation, the QIII. The processor that he had destroyed. That he had killed.

  ‘Well, well, well. Can you tell it to halt the ECW?’

  ‘You are in control,’ said Alexis softly. ‘You may tell it yourself.’

  Carter stared at the processor. ‘I am Carter,’ he said. ‘I want you to halt the Evolution Class Warhead.’

  The QIV hissed softly.

  On the screen, the army of missiles slowed their incredible speeds and finally halted. They hung, suspended over the sea, rotating slowly. The camera panned round, then withdrew, zooming out to show the vast glittering army of missiles—finally stopped.

  Carter looked around at Alexis.

  ‘I want the Nex to stop their battles, to halt their war,’ said Carter. ‘I want all Nex to withdraw. No more people are to be killed. We are cancelling the plans to evacuate the planet. You can do that?’

  ‘We are in the command centre,’ said Alexis. ‘We can do anything.’

  ‘Do it,’ said Carter.

  Alexis moved away, talking to several Nex at the huge banks of computer consoles. A hundred screens sprang to life, showing the global battle between Spiral, REBS, JT8s, Nex and the normal, everyday people who had risen up against this incredible threat...

  One by one, Nex armies started to withdraw. In New York, a crowd of attacking people suddenly went quiet as a strange silence washed over them. The Nex had lowered their guns. Tanks had ceased their shelling. Jets and combat choppers roared off, leaving the skies empty of battle.

  Carter took a deep breath.

  And noticed the QIV processor. It had changed, a subtle alteration as it became a deep glossy black under its crystals of ice. Carter frowned, licking at his dry lips.

  What’s wrong with it? he thought.

  What’s it doing?

  Carter slowly released the empty magazine from his Browning. It clattered to the floor, and he slotted home a fresh one. He stared hard at the QIV processor, remembering the earthquakes, remembering the nuclear strikes, remembering the millions of people it had helped to destroy.

  ‘You little fucker,’ he snarled, and stepped towards the cubic CPU with his Browning 9mm HiPower outstretched.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Carter.’

  Carter froze. The voice made the hackles rise up on the back of his neck. Goose bumps ran along his arms and danced down his spine. He felt as if a ghost had come back to haunt him. A really bad ghost. Something from his deepest, darkest nightmares.

  Carter turned slowly with a tightening in his chest, his gaze coming around to fix on—

  The Priest.

  The Priest wore his robes and his rosary beads and carried his small battered Bible in one hand. In his other hand he held his Glock 9mm and it was pointing at Carter’s head.

  ‘Tell me that you have come to stop this madness,’ said Carter.

  The Priest shrugged, giving a small smile through his thick beard.

  ‘Tell me you have come to halt the Nex.’

  ‘The Lord guides me,’ came The Priest’s deep and booming voice, and he took a step closer to Carter. Then he turned his head a little, and said, ‘Alexis, please command the Nex to resume their battles; to continue with their attacks. Man must learn his place. And instruct the QIV to release the Warhead and its subsidiary missiles. I want Detonation to begin in eight minutes.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Alexis, and moved back towards the command panels.

  ‘I thought I was in control,’ snapped Carter. ‘I am the PureBreed.’

  ‘You are one of the PureBreed,’ said The Priest, his eyes flashing dark and dangerous. ‘As am I. You are not in control, Carter. Just like Durell, you are my subordinate. You are my pawn.’

  ‘You are in control? The religious maggot? The insane, the inept, the Bible-quoting lunatic who has haunted Spiral from before I was fucking born? You are in control of all this?’

  ‘Yes. I am sorry, Carter, truly I am. I am a good man. A man of God. I never meant for it to turn out this way.’

  ‘So you are the same as me? You are Nex?’

  ‘I am PureBreed,’ said The Priest, ‘and like you I carry a KillChip in my skull.’

  ‘So we are evenly matched?’

  ‘It would appear that way,’ said The Priest darkly.

  ‘You never used to be like this,’ hissed Carter. ‘You worked with us—against Feuchter, against Durell. I saw it—with my own fucking eyes I saw it!’

  ‘People see what they want to see.’

  ‘You led us to this, didn’t you? You organised the betrayal of the SpiralGRID. You were the mole communicating with Durell. You betrayed Spiral, you motherfucking little worm!’ Carter thought back to his every moment with The Priest, his every meeting, his every spoken word. It had been The Priest who organised the missions—led Jam to the K-Labs, Carter and Mongrel to the ECW. And all the time it had been an elaborate set-up. Carter felt dead and cold inside. This was the ultimate betrayal—and Carter had been a blind man. ‘What happened to you?’ he whispered, his head shaking sadly. ‘You were our friend. You were our ally. You fought with us against this burden of evil.’

  ‘I have always battled for the right cause.’ The Priest’s gaze burned with sincerity.

  ‘When did you turn? When did you decide to work with Durell?’

  ‘After we found The Avelach,’ said The Priest. His voice was soft now. Reverent. ‘It showed me things, Carter. It showed me incredible things. It showed me another world. It showed me another life. It showed me another God. It showed me how we could be. It showed me how it should be.’

  ‘And you would exterminate the human race?’

  ‘You are looking at this through a distorted lens, Carter. I do not intend to destroy humanity. I intend to evolve humanity. We will build a new Eden, Carter. We will start again: with a purity of purpose, and the Will of the LORD!’

  ‘This is not the Will of God,’ snarled Carter. ‘This is your will. These are your goals. The Will of Man.’

  On the screens, the Warhead resumed its mission, accelerating out over the ocean with awesome speed.

  ‘Mankind is an abomination,’ said The Priest, his Glock still locked on Carter’s head. ‘Look at us! Just look at the world, Carter. Look at the rapes, the violence, the murders. Look at the terrorism, war, genocide.
Mankind is an expert at the creation of suffering. There is so much hate, my son, so much badness, so much cruelty. The apple is rotten, and has fallen from the tree to the ground where it merges with the dirt and is eaten by the worms. We need to begin again, Carter. We need a clean slate. The Avelach can do all this. The Avelach has shown me the light.’

  ‘Yeah, and how long before it turns bad again, Priest? How long before you inflict your own brand of suffering? How long before the corruption starts to gnaw away at the roots? Can’t you fucking see? This isn’t about hate and violence and wars ... that’s just what Man is. He is a predator. A hunter. A killer. We are a race of violent motherfuckers—born and bred on violence; weaned on hatred; suckled by the poisoned milk of evil. You cannot wipe the slate clean and begin again, because the results will turn out the same—it will just take longer. At best, you will secure a postponement of our natural evolution leading straight towards extinction. Priest, as a race we are destined for extermination. We are destined for Armageddon. We are a doomed species. We are a creation of an insane God. We are simply destined to die.’

  ‘Join me, Carter. Cleanse the world with me. Purify our brethren. Become a god with me. The Avelach has promised me this. The Avelach has shown me the future.’

  Carter laughed, a cold and brittle sound. ‘You want to play God? You are a fucking hypocrite, Priest. After all these years, that is the last thing I would ever dream you would say. Why don’t you just drop the Bible and piss on it right now?’

  The Priest’s eyes flashed with lightning. ‘I can see there is no convincing you.’

  ‘You’re damned fucking right there, Priest. I would rather die.’

  ‘That can be arranged.’

  Slowly, Carter had lifted his Browning as he was speaking, and now both men had their guns trained on one another. The atmosphere in the command centre was electric, charged with violence.

  Carter breathed out through clenched teeth, and he could see The Priest doing the same.

  This was the calm before the storm.

  The eye of the hurricane.

  With a scream, Carter launched himself forward, Browning blasting in his fist, to be met by The Priest, his own gun blossoming with bright yellow fire—

  And below them, the world slowly turned.

  The Comanche, piloted by Mongrel, hammered across the skies. From below, anti-aircraft fire shot up towards them on streamers of tracer. Mongrel, face grey and drawn with pain, exhaustion and loss of blood, banked the war machine as bullets rattled along their flanks.

  ‘Damn and bloody bollocks!’ hissed Mongrel.

  ‘Mongrel! Not in front of the child!’

  ‘Sorry, I truly sorry,’ said Mongrel. He glanced over his shoulder to see Joseph smiling at him.

  ‘My dad always said you swore a lot, Mr Mongrel.’

  ‘He did?’ Mongrel’s face brightened a little.

  ‘Mongrel, that’s not a good thing,’ Roxi chastised him.

  ‘Oh.’ His face fell.

  ‘The Dreadnought is approaching—fast.’ Roxi pointed past the huge squaddie.

  More anti-aircraft fire raced past them, and the Comanche’s alarm systems rang shrilly. Mongrel, muttering in Russian, banked hard again as engines howled in hot metal agony and the Comanche wobbled.

  ‘Your piloting skills are awesome,’ observed Roxi, dryly.

  ‘I has improved.’

  ‘You should have let me pilot the damned thing. You’ve lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘No! I have old scores to settle. You see. You be glad. You learn, young lady!’

  Bullets rattled along their flanks once more, and Mongrel winced. ‘Sorry!’ he wailed.

  ‘Just get us down onto that block of alloy in one piece, will you? I haven’t come this far through life just to let some half-dead squaddie with a faked photocopy of a pilot’s licence ruin it all because he couldn’t tell a mobile anti-aircraft gun from his own stinking armpit!’

  Mongrel frowned. ‘Hey! I is not half dead! I does resent that impli—implic— ... damn. I does resent it, anyway.’

  ‘Well, act like it, then. Look—that scanner shows SAMs, Stingers and K7s. Shit, Mongrel, fire the tracers, fire the fucking tracers!’ She leant past him and punched the console as, far below on the Ethiopian plateau, missiles started their upward thrust towards the Comanche.

  More bullets clattered against the combat helicopter.

  And up ahead, three black Nex choppers hung in the sky, waiting for the fast approach of the enemy Comanche. Guns flared as they opened fire, and Mongrel forgot his pain, forgot his bullet wounds and clamped his few remaining teeth together as he realised that he was outnumbered, outgunned, and had three rockets attempting a violent and illegal rear-entry manoeuvre ...

  ‘Just not this juicy pizda’s lucky day,’ he groaned, and swept forward with a rising howl of damaged engines into the waiting hail of dark Nex bullets.

  Carter’s bullet skimmed The Priest’s cheek, opening a long line in the flesh like a zip and revealing white bone beneath. The Priest’s bullet slammed into Carter’s shoulder, burrowing through skin, fat and muscle and lodging nastily between his clavicle and scapula. They slammed against one another, guns clattering across the floor of the command centre, and The Priest head-butted Carter on the nose as Carter’s right hook slammed against the older man’s temple.

  They spun away, blood flowing from both men, then leapt at one another again with a flurry of heavy connecting punches. Carter smashed a straight and a hook into The Priest, but the huge religious man absorbed the blows without apparent affect. Carter leapt, booted feet connecting with The Priest’s chest, but the huge man twisted, one arm slamming down against Carter’s shins as The Priest swung, flinging Carter to roll across the deck. The Priest strode forward as Carter climbed to his feet and they went at it again, punching and kicking, slamming blow after blow into one another. A sudden left uppercut from Carter sent The Priest stumbling backwards from the control centre and into the wide corridor. Nex who were there suddenly halted, stares turning to fix on the raging battle.

  Again Carter slammed his fists into The Priest’s face, and they grappled for a moment, blood soaking Carter’s shirt. Suddenly, he hooked fingers in the flap of skin on The Priest’s cheek and wrenched downwards to tear a huge gaping hole in the barrel-chested man’s face.

  They parted, Carter holding a ragged flap of bloodied skin.

  ‘Make a nice handbag, this,’ he said.

  The Priest glowered at him, face holed, eyes burning with insanity. ‘And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of the Power! That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men—but in the power of God! Behold, Carter. Behold! I am that God!’

  Carter threw the flap of skin at The Priest, and it landed with a soggy squelch on the grille floor to drip thick blood globules through to the lower levels. ‘You bleed pretty good for a god, holy man.’ Carter raised his fists. ‘Come here—let me show you how easily a god can fall.’

  They squared off and approached one another warily. Again, Carter’s punch was the first to connect, and for a few moments the bloody smash and hammer of fists drove The Priest backwards down the computer-lined corridor and onto the bottom of the ramp leading up to the Dreadnought’s surface.

  The Priest hit the ground with a grunt, blood pouring from his battered face. Then he turned and scrambled up the ramp, disappearing into the sunlight above.

  Carter sighed. ‘These fuckers will just not stay down.’ He moved warily up the ramp, out into the African sunlight; The Priest was waiting for him, backed by hundreds of armed Nex.

  ‘Come and taste God,’ hissed The Priest, and charged.

  They connected, Carter slamming punch after punch into The Priest’s face; The Priest launched a kick, but Carter blocked it with a downward blow, then smashed his elbow into The Priest’s face. The Priest rolled
, knocking Carter from his feet, and then stood with his face a demon’s mask of crimson, smiling down, chuckling, showing absolutely no signs of pain, or discomfort, or weariness.

  Carter blinked—

  And saw the gun in The Priest’s hand.

  Carter breathed out slowly, gaze fixed on the dark eye of that gun and then lifting to meet The Priest’s gold-flecked brown-eyed stare. Triumph danced there, shone in those bottomless depths.

  ‘Why, Priest? Why? I thought you were Spiral. I thought you were on our side. I just don’t understand.’

  ‘I can see the bigger picture, Carter. Whereas you—well, you only see a tiny part of the puzzle. There is a time to keep silent, and a time to speak—a time to love, and a time to hate. Now is my time to hate, Carter. Now is your time to die.’

  A scream hammered from behind Carter, wind forcing him down against the deck as something huge and black smashed into and over his vision, a titanic fury that howled scant inches above his prostrate body making his ears scream and his head pound and ripping all breath from him ... The Comanche, travelling at over two hundred kilometres an hour, slammed into The Priest, front landing gear crumpling and crushing to push the war machine’s nose down heavily onto the deck with a screech of tearing steel and showering sparks. It skittered along, tail sweeping around in a broad arc and sending Nex soldiers sprinting for cover, and then slowly slid to a halt at the end of a long red smear of liquid, pulped Priest.

  ‘If you’re going to preach, then preach. If you’re going to kill, then kill.’ Carter smiled a real nasty smile. ‘And amen to that, holy man. A-fucking-men.’

  The cockpit canopy creaked open, and Mongrel heaved his patched-up body out onto the Dreadnought’s deck. The armoured rotors finally thumped to a halt, and Mongrel grinned over at Carter, then moved round to the front of the Comanche and attempted to peer underneath, limping and wheezing with pain.

  Carter climbed to his feet, and followed the long red smear to the ticking, clicking, hissing Comanche. Mongrel gestured with his thumb at the mangled crush where the remains of The Priest were wrapped partly round the mini-gun, partly around the twisted landing gear. The head, apparently, had gone.