Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  As his eyes adjusted, so the most gentle of ambient lights was made available. It emerged from the silver skeins flowing through the monument, and although it was barely enough to see by, it at least illuminated the vague outline of the chamber in which he sat, huddled with his own pain, riddled with a hot agony.

  As far as Keenan could make out, the chamber was small, with tunnels leading away. Some objects on the ground told him all he needed to know; they were bones, old bones that crumbled under his fingers when he tried to lift them, but bones all the same. This had been, or was, the home of a predator.

  Keenan reached for his pack, but it was gone. As was his array of weapons. At least he still had his WarSuit and, reaching down, Keenan tapped both boots. Each revealed a tiny, triangular blade and Keenan pulled them free. Each blade was only an inch long, but incredibly sharp and very, very tough. Hardly weapons at all, more survival tools, but at least Keenan had something to work with.

  Keenan stood, and whacked his head on the roof. He dropped to his knees again, reaching above himself until he found the shaft down which he'd slid and tumbled in an unconscious mess. Mouth a grim line, he stood again, rising into the hole, and his fingers probed the edges around the rim. It was smooth. Too smooth. Too smooth to climb, at least...

  Above, there came a distant sound. Like thunder, but instead of petering out it went on, and on, and on, an ominous pounding which made Keenan, alone in his tiny rock cell, shiver. What's going on up there? Murder?

  He grinned. I fucking hope so.

  For a few experimental moments he attempted to climb using his daggers, but there simply weren't enough holds in the rock, so he crouched again and peered about, nose twitching at the cool breeze. A breeze meant airflow through the tunnels, which in turn meant an exit. Lowering himself, Keenan moved about the confines of the chamber, and found five possible exits. Great, he thought. A maze. Which way? Which way out? Confusingly, all tunnels blew with a cool flow of air, and Keenan licked desert-dry lips and wondered how that was possible.

  "You're a long way from home," said a soft, female voice, so quiet for a moment Keenan thought it was simply the moaning of the wind.

  Keenan blinked rapidly, backing away, both daggers before him.

  "Put your knives away, little man. You won't need them with me."

  "I'll be the judge of that," snapped Keenan, spinning around, unable to pinpoint the direction of the voice. "Where are you?" He pictured the bones in his mind. "And what are you?"

  There came a laugh; deep, rich, genuine humour. And then he could see her, hunched in the mouth of a tunnel, an eerie glow of silver surrounding her from deposits in the rock. She moved, and there were several metallic crackles, almost insect-like, but not quite, and curiously disturbing. She moved forward, unfolding from her crouch and crossing her arms in a very human gesture.

  "I am Elana. This is my Cathedral."

  "Elana. You're human?" Keenan squinted. In the poor light she was thin, and wearing what looked like silks which floated around her in the breeze. She had long dark hair, but everything else was obscured.

  "Not... quite."

  "Well, what are you?"

  "Is this a philosophical question, Mr. Keenan? Or maybe a scientific examination? Perhaps you'd wish to study my place in the social hierarchy? What am I? Parasite? Deviant? Do I fit the normal template for your particular bastardised and twisted evolution? After all, humanity was given a mighty helping hand in their galactic soup and quest for knowledge." She paused, seemed to smile. Her silks floated ypnotically around her. "Come with me Mr. Keenan. I want to show you my Cathedral."

  Keenan relaxed back, the knives still in his hands. He released a breath. "Is there a way out?"

  "There is always a way out. But come; first, let me show you some hospitality. After all, you've taken a nasty tumble. How are your fingers? But I get ahead of myself, and in reality it is for your own benefit they pushed you down to my Haven."

  "How so?"

  "Listen."

  Keenan could still hear distant thunder. A gloomy, threatening noise like a collision of worlds. "What is it?"

  "It's the Rockfall, Mr. Keenan, and very, very dangerous."

  "Rockfall?"

  "Come with me. Everything will be explained."

  Keenan rocked to his feet and approached Elana, catching a glimpse of great beauty at the same time as the stench of putrefaction. Elana turned and, stooping, led Keenan into a long, narrow corridor of smooth rock.

  "You have been here a long time?" said Keenan.

  "Longer than you could ever dream."

  "Years? Is this a prison?"

  "No, this is the Cathedral. My Haven. I stay here lest VOLOS spy my movements and decide he has tired of my petty intrusion. I don't like to remind him that I exist, for if I remind him I exist then I seek to further his wrath."

  "VOLOS?"

  "I forget. You are not of this place. Still, I should not speak the name." She laughed. "It is not a wise move to anger your gods, especially when they are as evil as He."

  Keenan remained silent, following Elana, breathing the bad smell, almost sulphuric, certainly choking, and wondering if it came from this hinted-at pretty creature before him or the surrounding rock.

  As they moved, so the light changed, grew brighter, became more diffused. Colours started to filter through the air, like laser beams of fuzzy iridescence. And then... then Keenan's jaw dropped open and he stopped as the interior of the monument opened into what Elana had quite rightfully described as a Cathedral...

  The interior space was massive, a canyon hollowed from the inside of the rock, a huge, jagged mountain leading up through shafts of colour to a distant, distant pinnacle. Keenan stared in wonder at the dazzling colours unrolling lazily through the thick-lit air, like lasers through honey. The whole world felt sleepy, as if tumbling through slow motion, and Keenan realised he stood on a ledge, very high up; and below, far below, was a lake of light, collected, merged, spooled skeins of rainbow swirling and coalescing as if caught in some strange magnetic field.

  "That's impressive," said Keenan, forcing words between slow-mo lazy lips.

  Elana turned, and smiled, and she smiled with the face of a junk.

  Keenan's hands lashed up, but Elana struck out with awesome speed, knocking both knives from Keenan's hands. He watched his blades spin away over the colourful abyss, then fall fall fall into a rainbow infinity.

  "I am not your enemy," said Elana. Her face, well shaped, well proportioned, damn, thought Keenan, say it, although the word burned him worse than any toxic poison. Elana was pretty, in that her face was finely sculpted, high cheekbones, thick black hair swept back and tied high, her well-endowed figure hung with floating silks that did nothing to hide her athletic, voluptuous, and - to a human at least - exciting physique. But her face, her face was that of the junk, a once beautiful and proud and intelligent race, long ago deviated, polluted, made toxic and turned out into a cold hydrogen-infused galaxy with only one motivation: to kill. Keenan stared at Elana, looked into her blood-red eyes, observed her skin, like pitted, old, corroded iron, her nose a small nub, her mouth very narrowly rimed with lips. She smiled, spreading her hands apart, offering no threat, and Keenan was a coiled spring tensed ready to attack and maim and murder for these junks, this pestilence had attacked his home-world and brought slaughter and desolation to millions of innocents...

  "Wait," said Elana, words soft, thrumming, cutting through the thick colours which swirled down from above. As she spoke, Keenan could see the silver interior of her mouth, the tiny triangular teeth and the small, black, forked tongue.

  "I should kill you," snarled Keenan.

  "But you won't."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Because I have looked into your heart, looked into your soul, and I have read that which Emerald gave you. You are no longer a simple human entity: you have been changed, you have been genetically altered, you have been given a gift. Look into my heart, Keenan. Search me for evi
l. And if you find any there, please, feel free to kick me from the brink."

  Keenan blinked. And using his alien-given powers, an ability which curled like a snake in his chest, tail in mouth encircling his heart, asleep, dormant, so Keenan allowed the flow of green energy freedom and he reached into Elana, reached into the junk, searching for evil and corruption, putrefaction and the taint of tox. But she was clean. She was good. She was pure. And, almost with disappointment, Keenan withdrew; for Keenan was a killer, and at this moment in time, he had a lot of reason to kill.

  "You helped Emerald," said Elana, words a lullaby, mouth flashing silver, "and in return she entered you and left a residue of what the Kahirrim call kurr. You have the Dark Flame seed in your heart, Keenan. You are no longer wholly human. But then, you know that, you accept that, and you use it."

  Keenan found his eyes were closed. He was re-living that merging with the alien, Emerald, on a different world, in a different time. It seemed so long ago, so incredibly distant. But she had given him something; aside from the gift, she had given him the will to carry on with life, to clutch at sheer existence, unadulterated life-force. Without the gift Keenan would have long ago become radioactive dust.

  "You're a junk, anathema to life in the Four Galaxies," said Keenan.

  Elana nodded. "It is so. And yet, I am different, Keenan. I am a purity, a distillation. Maybe I was so evil I simply came out the other side? Or maybe I wasn't fully corrupted when the Junkala fell from grace."

  "Junkala? How old are you?"

  Elana's expression was distant, and there, in her Cathedral, with light tumbling down as if from a billion different stained-glass panes, Keenan realised that she was beautiful, a strange deformed beauty, a beauty of soul and character and age and existence. Not simply aesthetics. Something much more deep.

  "The Junkala lived in utopia. We were masters of art, literature, genetics, the building of new civilisations, the guiding of races from egg to travel. We sought gateways, stepped like gods into different planes of reality. Until we found Him."

  "Him?"

  "Leviathan. He followed us, pursued our arrogance, and here on this world he created VOLOS to watch over us, to nurture us, to deviate us to his template. Yes, Keenan." She looked at him then, into his eyes with her own blood-red orbs that Keenan found dangerously disturbing. "Leviathan was here. Leviathan created the junks, from the Junkala. He corrupted us. Twisted us. And your quest, on this," she laughed, a tinkling of chimes, "this Sick World, well, you have taken the first step. You are in the right place."

  "I seek answers."

  "To questions? How to stop the junks? Leviathan? I do not have such answers. I was an artist, Keenan. Never a warrior, never a warlord. But... I can point you in the right direction. I can set you on a path to - answers. To salvation."

  "For me, or you?"

  "For both, I feel." She grasped him, her hands on his shoulders, a movement so sudden Keenan gasped. "Keenan. I am filled with a shame so deep you could never comprehend. The junks, you despise them, every organic form in the Life Bubble despise them for they are the scourge, a pestilence, the bringers of death. And yet we were not always so. I would seek to make amends. I would seek..."

  Keenan reached up, touched her pitted, metallic hand. "Redemption?"

  "I want to help put things right."

  "The Quad-Gal Military seek to exterminate the junks. Annihilation. Extinction."

  "That may be what it takes."

  Keenan sighed, and looked beyond this curious anomaly, out into the swirling colours. "I am tired of death."

  "It is a natural cycle; the way of things. And yet, what the junks impose is far from natural. However." Elana composed herself, removing her hands and smoothing down her silks. "You must come with me. I have something to show you."

  "With regards Leviathan?"

  "No. First you must seek VOLOS."

  "And what do you want?"

  Elana tilted her head. "In return for my help?" She laughed again. "I want nothing, Keenan. Just to feel like I helped, before VOLOS rediscovers me and obliterates my puny Junkala shell from existence."

  "Is he really that powerful?"

  Elana waved her arm, summoning a platform of swirling colours. It eased towards the ledge, and bumped gently, nudging the rocky lip. She fixed Keenan with a stare he could not read, her emotions lost to him on that subtly-skewed alien face.

  "He is Hardcore," she said, simply.

  "We are the fucking smart party!" howled Ed, and gave a high five to Maximux from the back seat of the 6X6 Giga-Buggy as they roared across the desert. Snake was watching a blip on the scanner. It was Franco's exact location. And Franco was on the move.

  "OK, we're locked on to him," said Snake. "You two need to stop congratulating one another like amateur homosexual bank robbers, and get the guns ready. Right?"

  Max stared hard at Snake, then smiled a wide smile, and Snake knew what that smile meant. Maximux would wait until they had the money, then make his move. Snake, however, would be waiting.

  They ploughed on, engine roaring, sand billowing in their wake. Above, thunder rumbled in the heavens, a deep and urgent grumbling.

  Snake glanced up, then back at his two companions. "Thunder?" he said. "In the desert? I thought it never rained here?"

  "It doesn't," said Ed, frowning.

  Snake slowed the Buggy, warily. He hadn't lived so long, and retained his single eye, without being cautious. Thunder rumbled again. Now, the green-tinged night sky was lit by a flicker of lightning. It was green, and cracked the distant horizon apart. And yet, and yet -

  "There's no rain," said Snake, eyes narrowing.

  "What kind of thunderstorm has no rain?" said Ed, uneasily.

  Snake stamped the brakes, and the Buggy slid to a stop. All around, the desert was silent. Black, rimed with green, an eldritch night scene.

  Distantly, there came a pattering sound.

  "Ach!" breathed Ed, "here comes the rain. Thank buggery for that! I was starting to get worried."

  "Wait," said Snake, a quiet word on an exhalation of mistrust.

  "For what, Big Man? Christmas?" This brought a snigger from Maximux, ever one to share in a bit of sarcasm.

  The pattering got louder. More violent. And ahead, sweeping towards them, they saw a storm of -

  "Rocks?" hissed Ed.

  "It's the fucking Rockfall," screamed Snake, slamming the Buggy into gear and spinning sand in a panic of acceleration. The Buggy slewed around, spitting out a streamer of sand, and ploughed off down a steep sand dune, swerving to avoid rocks.

  "What's a Rockfall?" asked Maximux, patting Snake on the shoulder.

  "It's a storm that pisses rocks all over your head," screamed Snake. "Now let me fucking drive!" His boot slammed the floor, and they howled across packed desert, jigging left and right, whamming past long-fallen rocks, skidding around outcrops of jagged granite, and all the while, behind, a sweep of rocks tumbling from the enraged heavens followed at speed, filling the horizon with a sheet of granite from edge to edge, and, more importantly, more worryingly, it was slowly gaining...

  "We can't outrun it!" came Ed's shrill cry.

  But they tried. They had no other option.

  The thundering was louder, green lightning crackled, and the rain of rocks came slamming towards the Buggy like a granite tsunami, a solid blurred teeming wall of merciless death...

  And then it was over them. They drove, as if in tune, in a perfect equilibrium, rocks smashing and thudding all around as they powered along.

  "You're doing it!" hissed Ed, patting Snake on the shoulder.

  The rock hit the bonnet of the Buggy with such force, it broke the vehicle in two, flipping it up into the air from nose to arse, wheels spinning skywards with a grinding screech of metal. Sparks filled the area and the Buggy tumbled over and over and over. In its falling trajectory more rocks struck the Giga-Buggy, knocking it left, then right, bashing it and pulverising armoured steel as it was spat across the d
esert like a pinball in a machine, to finally come to rest on its roof, clicking.

  Rocks thudded all around, some as large as a house.

  The three men climbed from the Buggy, took one ragged look at each other, and with arms over their heads - as if that would make a difference - ran for it.

  Sourly, Snake thought, it's gonna be a long, hard, bastard night.

  They drifted down, for what seemed days. Keenan fell into a state of standing catalepsy, unmoving, suffused by the magic of the Cathedral's tumbling colours. "It is so beautiful," he said at last, as coils of red, green and amber lassoed his body and then gently spun away, entwining like snakes in oil.

  "Do not underestimate the Colours. It is my Cathedral's defence mechanism. There is a high-density magnetic field charged with elenium-particles; the colours drift, ensnare, but at my command can become rigid. I can rip you into a billion atoms at the flick of the wrist," she said. And smiled.

  "And yet, you still fear VOLOS?"

  "And so should you. I have a nasty suspicion he will shortly become aware of your intrusion and seek to stamp you from the planet. As he did when the place was colonised, for the purposes of Sick World."

  "So it was VOLOS who chased away all the medical staff? A thousand years ago?"

  "Chased away?" Elana shook her head. "No. It is worse than that. Let us say he is millennia bored, and enjoys his little games."

  "I feel like a child," said Keenan. "There is so much I don't understand."

  "All will be revealed. If you search in the right places."

  Within minutes the small pad drifted down and bumped against a rocky floor. Keenan jumped off, glad to have something solid beneath battered boots, and then glanced up. The world above was colour, constantly shifting, bright and ethereal, like a billion coils of entrapped rainbow. He had never seen anything quite like it.

  "Where are we going?"

  "I said I was an artist. After the fall of the Junkala, I appointed myself protector of that which I could save."