By Other Means (Defending The Future)

by James Chambers

  Carter stared down at the slack, lifeless corpse; a young, beautiful woman who had taken her own life in the name of God-only-knew what forsaken cause. He grimaced, as if swallowing sour wine. He stood. “No,” he said. “No problem at all. Out.”

  Mongrel brought the fast-attack Manta in slow through the darkness and sleeting rain of Manhattan, and touched down with hydraulic hisses and the soft whine of matrix coils in the yard of an abandoned slaughterhouse. His gloved hand reached out, steadying himself against the twisted metal console of the nav computer. And, with eyes squinting, unshaved face a contortion of concentration, and fear, and yet lined with an inner superior strength which made him the son-of-a-bitch rough and tumble psychopathic good-natured bear-like Spiral-op bastard that he was, Mongrel searched for his old friend and Demol57 buddy, Carter, as he licked at dry lips revealing broken, crooked teeth—victims of too many late night bar brawls, smashed stumps the remainders of beer-induced, knuckle-buckled sandwiches. Mongrel’s face was framed with battle-weariness. A deep and ingrained bitterness. And in this New New York World, fear was never far from his mind…

  “Come on svoloch jailbird, where are you? Or did gov police break up your little party with the dead killer?”

  The Browning touched the back of Mongrel’s skull. “Getting slow, fat man.”

  “Ha!” Mongrel snapped, turning and grinning at his old friend. “I knew you there all the time! I smell you, like underwear drawer of a bad prostitute.”

  “Like a...Mongrel, you’re a modern-day savage.”

  “Better believe it!”

  Carter stared at Mongrel, and could feel the malevolence within the huge man; the tension, the violence, the hatred. Mongrel was a psychopath, born and bred, a poison-brained fucker of the lowest order, a face-smashing, bone-pulping, kneecap-breaking, spine-tearing dirty low-down son of a bitch. Carter loved him, but also hated him; a symbiotic metal meshing of hate-souls.

  Carter dropped down beside Mongrel, and the stocky East European Spiral op lifted the stealth Manta high above New York, watching the lights spread out, a glittering carpet of sour diamonds on a rug of tattered velvet. “Target?”

  “The Pyramid Rig. You heard of it?”

  “Aye. That’s a big target, Carter. You want me call for backup?”

  “No. No. I’m playing this one close to my chest.”

  “That’s how dumb svolos get dead, my friend.”

  Carter shrugged, and lit a cigarette.

  “No smoking, Carter.”

  “Ha. Shoot me,” he said.

  30mi NW Cape Wrath

  North Coast of Scotland

  1.01AM

  The K5 Phantom Fast Attack Boat skimmed the blood-dark waters of the Atlantic, Carter at the helm, motors switched to stealth mode as he rode the violent razor waves of an ocean which took no prisoners. Even as the Pyramid Rig loomed through sea-spray and darkness, lights cutting laser shafts through gloom, so the murderous heavens opened and rain slapped the ocean like an irate lover.

  Carter killed the engines, turned to Mongrel. “One hour to exfil,” he said.

  “Aye, boss.”

  Carter spat, pulled on his mask, primed the tanks, and sat on the edge of the K5 which rose and fell, riding the waves with a stability born of five billion dollars research investment. Carter checked his watch, ECube, and weapon. He gave a skeletal grin.

  “Wish me luck?”

  “Break a leg,” nodded Mongrel, and Carter dropped backward into the ink waters and was gone. Mongrel’s narrow smile turned to a grimace, he fired the K5 and turned the boat, zipping back across surging violent waves to the makeshift Spiral mobile base on the bleak, deserted Scottish beach.

  Carter sank into the void. It was cold. Ice cold. So dark he felt he was sinking into the heart of the world. Or insanity, at least. He grinned behind his mask as dark wings enfolded him. Yeah. He liked that. Sinking into a Heart of Darkness...

  His ECube gave a faint green glow, and he began to kick. Motors whirred softly, and Carter glided through the subterranean gloom. It was all encompassing. Like being in the womb. Like being born. Like being dead.

  “You deserve it, Butcher.” Kade grinned from some deep dark tomb world in his mind.

  “Get to fuck and die,” Carter growled in the confines of his mask; in the confines of his skull. And he wished then. Wished fervently that he was dead. For when he was dead, Kade would be dead—and that would be an end to that.

  “She’s gonna suck you in and spit you out.”

  “Who?”

  “Rebecca. Codename Rebecca. Your friendly neighbourhood psychopathic terrorist with fifty nukes, a private Red Scorpion Army, and the keys to the Oil Kingdom in her sweaty pants. There’s no way you’re taking her down, bro. Not without a fight.”

  “Strangely, that’s something I’m good at,” Carter growled, the internal monologue a burning brand against the rage inside his skull. “Now piss off and let me do my job. Before I get really mad and book myself in for a frontal lobotomy.”

  Kade faded; like a ghost; a bad friend; an ancient feud.

  Carter moved through the darkness, and saw the armed subs sleek and black and creeping up on him. These were LVA powered Protector Units, but his ECube stealth had kicked him; he was invisible to their radar, sonar, green eyes, and t56 scanners. Carter had become the ghost. Carter was a bad fucking dream.

  Codename Rebecca. Shit. Leader of the Red Scorpion Syndicate and directly responsible for destroying not just the 57th Summit Building in Paris, but also single-handedly burning down the Houses of Parliament. Talk about Guy Fawkes! This bitch had succeeded where Fawkes failed miserably. Linked to five Middle Eastern arms smugglers and a central figure in the global distribution network of Grey Five, a designer plague/drug currently responsible for wiping out half a million people. Rebecca. She was bad shit. And Spiral had decided it was time to bring her down. Time to take her out. And Carter had drawn the short straw...or maybe the trump card, depending on which way you looked at it. After all— Carter was bad shit himself. And now, it would seem, no matter how small the moderation, his investigation and infiltration had been compromised.

  He swam beneath the huge, huge struts supporting the Pyramid Rig. It was a disused LVA drilling rig, LVA being the miracle fuel which had pushed mankind higher and further and deeper into space—up up up the ziggurat, indeed. This drilling compound, however, was as dead as the dinosaurs now. It had bled and raped the earth dry of all nutrients. Drilled the bitch, rolled her over and left her to die. Now, it would seem, the mysterious terrorist Rebecca had reinvigorated the behemoth. Now it was core HQ. The Pyramid Rig was her terrorist den...

  Carter was primed to shut her down.

  He moved through the darkness like a modern day Grendel. He eased from dark waters, and thanks to the ECube the armed guards never saw him coming. The low-level platform, half submerged by freezing waters, led way to a guard barracks containing eight men; Carter rose from the water, and they were eating a hot, steaming meal, at ease with one another, Stirling p5 sub-machine guns slack and useless by their sides. Carter eased up the mesh ramp, boots soft and silent, battered face dropping down into that calm quiet place before the kill. He moved along the alloy corridor. They had to die. Had to die, or break his infiltration...

  His silenced Browning 9mm HiPower hovered, and then he was in the room and shooting fast. Bullets smashed and crashed across open spaces. Guards leapt to their feet, only to be punched flailing backward with bullets in their skulls, bullets in their eyes, blood pissing up walls, pooling across floors, splattering their steaming food, crashing their screams into an infinity of darkness. Carter stood, motionless in the smoke, waiting. A guard came through from the kitchen, rolling fast, his own pistol barking like a cancer-croaking dog. Bullets slammed around Carter and he sighted, calm and cool, and a single 9mm round took the attacker between the eyes. He dropped, twitched, lay still. His blood was just as dark, red, and devastating as the rest.

  Cater breath
ed.

  “Great work!” Kade crowed in the depths of his mind, voice like the mockery of carrion crows squabbling over eyeballs on a battlefield. “Although it was too fast, my man. You should have savoured the job—took more time; used a knife, maybe. Yeah. A blade. A garrotte. Savoured the pain. Savoured the suffering. After all, only that way do they earn fucking respect; earn their way into the Chaos Halls like the death sluts they are.”

  “Go. Away.”

  “Aww, come on Carter, don’t be like that...let me out for some fun, let me out to play..”

  “Kade, the day I willingly let you out of the cage that is my skull, that’s the day I roll over and beg forgiveness from God; that’s the day I relinquish my soul to the devil.”

  Carter felt Kade grinning. “My son,” he said, voice full of pious mockery, “you already did that a thousand years ago.”

  Carter moved on, filled with bitterness and bile. Not just from the act of killing, which he could bear, which was necessary, but which deep down he loathed. Every man deserved life; every life he ended was like a nail through his soul. No. The bitterness and bile came from the world, from the endless exploits of bastards destined to make the world a darker place. Why in my lifetime? Why does it all happen in my lifetime? But of course, it did not. It just felt like it when he was up to his neck in blood, vomit, and entrails.

  Carter glided down corridors. Occasionally he had contact, and the Browning hissed through silenced steel. Guards were slammed back, skulls exploding, chests imploding. Dark blood ran in rivers down channels, dripping through mesh walkways, splattering ancient drilling machinery. All of it, all of it burned Carter like alien acid.

  It will end. I’ll kill Rebecca, leader of this neat little depraved outfit, and it will end.

  No, it will never end. These things never do. You just delay the inevitable.

  All life is a cycle. All death a temporary jump from the wheel.

  The way to the top of the Pyramid Rig was one full of bloodshed. Carter was a dark demon, stalking the Halls, walking the Bone Yards, until he felt Her Presence and knew in his soul he had done the right thing; he was here to kill the most successful terrorist of the Age and it was a necessary extermination. No emotions, no empathy; just like putting down a dangerous, rabid dog, it was a grim job that simply had to be done.

  Carter rested his gloved hand against the steel door, and pushed. Beyond, the large, low-ceilinged room was warm and quiet. It soothed him. It was filled with glittering computer banks and dark alleyways of dull black machinery. It was a calm place, a still place, and Carter moved forward carefully, his senses screaming, aware that this could be a trap and one wrong step and he’d be dogmeat. Minced dogmeat.

  “Welcome,” came the voice, and Carter focused. Ahead, on a self-appointed throne, sat a man. He was young, with short black hair and a beard. He was beautiful, sculpted, in the same way the statues of the Greek Gods were sculpted. He looked down with great magnanimity. He seemed not to notice Carter’s blood-drenched clothing, nor the battered Browning 9mm HiPower in his fist.

  Carter blinked, and stood from his combat crouch. He licked dry, salted lips. He focused on the man. “Costarvis?” he said, unsure, confused, and then rubbed his eyes as his Browning lowered.

  “Kill him, kill the motherfucker!” Kade screamed in his mind. “He’s the one, he’s the bad man, he’s fucking Codename Rebecca—the super terrorist. Don’t let him charm you! Shoot him in the throat now and sup on his milky blood...”

  “I’m sorry, Carter. It’s been a long journey.”

  Carter locked eyes with the man. Costarvis was smiling, nodding knowingly, like a benign deity offering Hope.

  “You’re dead,” he said. “I helped shovel you into a body-bag.”

  “A decoy, I fear,” Costarvis said, and steepled his fingers, placing his chin on the apex. “I do hope you will forgive me. Forgive me the...subterfuge. I know I have blinded you for a long time, Carter. I know I have been a...”

  “A bad friend?” Carter grinned suddenly. He spat on the alloy floor of the rig, and rubbed at his rough stubble. “You don’t fucking say.”

  “You were a necessary casualty,” Costarvis said, and his face had drawn back, features in a smile but his eyes were cold, and the more Carter thought about it, the harder Carter thought about it, his eyes had always been cold. There was a lack of warmth there. Lack of heat. A lack of fire. This was a man chiselled from granite. From ice. This was a man who had been built, not born. A man who lacked the basic binary construct for understanding friendship. A man who lacked empathy. Compassion. Humanity, baby, fucking humanity.

  Carter walked forward, toward the mockery of a throne. It fitted Costarvis perfectly. It had been fashioned in his image.

  “Codename Rebecca?” he said, half turning, watching his old friend, his new enemy, from the corner of his eye. “Hardly original.”

  “I had to throw those sniffing Spiral Hounds from my scent. I used every weapon in my arsenal.”

  “I saw the weapons you used,” Carter said, voice turning suddenly cold. “I saw the corpses. The soldiers. The warriors. The men. But I also saw the women. The children. The helpless. The weak. The unprotected. You cunt.”

  Costarvis shrugged, face, eyes, none of them changing.

  “In War, there are always casualties,” he said.

  “In War, there are rules, damn you!” Carter snarled.

  “Not in my War,” Costarvis said, cold eyes twinkling like diamonds trapped in ice. “I play to win. I play to kill! Now put down the gun before my Scale Lasers cut you in half.”

  “No,” Carter said, staring head-on at Costarvis.

  “I’m warning you, Carter. No heroics. I’ll fuck you where you stand.”

  Carter stood firm. “No,” he growled.

  There was a pause. A long pause. A hiatus in time. Then Costarvis lifted his hand, and he carried a tiny button trigger. “I’d say I’m sorry it had to end like this.” He smiled. “But I’m not.” He pressed the trigger with an air of theatrics; pressed it with all the pomp and will of a Greek tragedy.

  Nothing happened.

  Carter lifted his Browning. Sighted carefully down the barrel. “I’d say I’m sorry it had to end like this,” he muttered, “but I’m not.” He fired, a silencer muffled SLAM, and the bullet crashed into Costarvis’ shoulder ramming him back into his makeshift terrorist throne, merging his skin and flesh and muscle and bone, merging them with the polished leather and hardwood frame of the seat he thought elevated him. Costarvis cried out. Carter lowered his face, and gazed from dangerous hooded eyes at the man he had once called a friend. A brother. A comrade. They’d been through tough times together. Hard times. Saved one another’s lives. And he’d fucking turned on Carter, turned on the world. He’d become a bad man. He’d become a bad friend. He’d become a non-friend. And Carter no longer had it in his heart to forgive him. Could not. Would not. Could not fucking bury the betrayal.

  Blood flowed. Splattered. Costarvis was whimpering like a child. He held out a hand as if to ward off further blows. “But, my Lasers...”

  “EMP. Before I entered the room,” said Carter, and opened his palm showing the blue-glowing ECube. “Upgrades. But you wouldn’t know about that. Because you turned on Spiral. Turned on your brothers. And that, my old and twisted friend, will be your undoing.”

  Costarvis lunged forward, but Carter stepped back with contempt. Costarvis hit the metal walkway hard, and crawled forward until he rested on Carter’s boots. He drooled, thick pools of saliva, and a little blood.

  “Forgive me.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t kill me. Please. I beg you...”

  Carter thought about this. “We had some good times together.”

  “Yes.”

  “We went through some shit together. And you saved my arse, brother.”

  “Yes! So spare me, now, let me go. I promise—I’ll disappear. Drift away. You’ll never hear from me again. Spiral will never hear fr
om me again...I promise! I have so much life to give, so many things I could still do with my life...”

  “Tell it to the widows and the orphans,” Carter growled, and levelled his Browning.

  Costarvis cried, drooling snot on Carter’s boots, eyes closed, limbs shaking. Carter clicked his tongue in annoyance, and stepped away. He turned his back on his old friend, his old colleague, his ex-brother. “You know, I thought you would have fucking had more dignity,” he said, and walked down the alloy corridor.

  “You won’t kill me?” came Costarvis’ wail.

  “I haven’t the heart to stand on a worm,” Carter snapped.

  “Die, you bastard!” Costarvis screamed, surging to his feet, a microP7 pistol in his hand, bullets slamming like insects down the corridor. One hit Carter in the shoulder, and he staggered, and another hit him in the flank, smashing two ribs, and he went down on one knee breathing hard. Costarvis was still running. Carter spat blood. He felt unconsciousness welling from a deep dark oil tar pit, and knew, this was it, this was death, bubbling up to take him like a bitch from behind...but then Kade was there, and Kade was revelling in the joy and the fire and the pain and the breath of fresh flowers and he opened his eyes, opened Carter’s eyes from a million miles away and Kade breathed, breathed deep the air of the Pyramid Rig and the world flooded in like honey, and pain, pretty pain, and there was no colour, there was never any colour, the world was a place spinning up from…black and white.

  Kade stood. Costarvis fired again, as he ran, and Kade twitched to one side, the bullet whirring along his cheek and cutting open flesh like a zip. But the pain did not bother Kade. Nothing bothered Kade. The Browning slammed up, and a bullet howled down the short space punching a hole through Costarvis’ hand. The ex-Spiral man screamed, dropping his weapon, stumbling, going down on one knee. A second shot from the 9mm HiPower bit like acid into his shoulder and exploded bone shrapnel across the alloy walkway. Costarvis lay there, writhing like a stoat in a bear-trap.

  Kade sauntered forward, whistling softly, and examined the nails of one hand. “Carter, my man, you really should take care of your body,” he said, and polished them against the soft fabric of his wetsuit. Then he focused on the squirming, agony-filled Costarvis, as if seeing the man for the first time.