by Andy Remic
"It's just," Paddy hunched in, like a hunchback conspirator with a lopsided head sharing his deepest secrets, "it looks like the Zeppelin3, with you four sexy sex-chicks onboard, it looks likes this will be the biggest fun ride of the last, ooh, thousand years! Know what I mean?" He boomed laughter, one eye winking again, and squeezed Franco's arse.
"Gerrof!" growled Franco, forgetting to use his fake falsetto.
"Ahahaha," said Paddy. "That's what I like to see. A nurse with spirit! An utmost bubbling energy! And hands that can crack a coconut! Any more macho, sweetie, and you'll be joining the Village People! Aha ha ha ha ha. And... and and and if you don't mind me saying so, your lack of peroxide hair and cherry-red lipstick..."
"Yeah?" snarled Franco.
"Well." Paddy's eyes gleamed, and he licked his greasy lips. "Ladies. It's a real turn on."
the Zeppelin3 moved up to the roof of the cavern, then into a wide tunnel which swallowed the vessel like a pea in an ocean. Franco and the squad took seats behind Zegg and Paddy, and as they rose through the vastness Franco experienced a strange sensation, as if he was rising from the belly of a beast, up its vast oesophagus to be vomited out into freezing ice air.
As they rose, so the temperature fell and fell and fell, until they saw a distant oval of light. Gradually, the tunnel was filled with a grey-white aura and they emerged into a perfect snowscape, cruising from a sloped shaft and up into the heavens which were gloriously clear. A white world spread out around the Zeppelin3, and Zegg manoeuvred the cumbersome vessel with skill, lifting it gradually to a high altitude where the breeze was crisp, cold and violently refreshing.
Zegg continued to prattle on, in what Franco termed a Terminally Useless Talk; he would speak, gush, froth and ejaculate, but rarely did his dialogue make any sense except to promote his own sense of self-worth and importance.
"...yes and now the Para-Medics are at the forefront of all military medical battlefield technology, and you'll find that the Para-Medics - did I mention I was a Para-Medic? - well the Para-Medics are the most lethal in battle, the most terrible in combat, and between us we are a collective genius in the art of destruction." He beamed.
"Is that so?" said Franco.
"Oh yes," said Zegg, plodding his zeppelin through the cold skies. "Once, millennia ago, these airships were Air Ambulances, they were used for emergencies across the entirety of Sick World and the Para-Medics, even then, were held in a very high esteem but not in the same high esteem as we now demand, due to our terrible lethality in battle, did I mention we were terrible in battle? The Para-Medics are supreme in battle, and it's rare any other army can get the better of us but as I was saying, the Air Ambulances were used in emergencies and Para-Medics like me, with the Red Band, we were the top notch guys better believe it but the bureaucracy kept trying to mess with us because, hey, that's what bureaucracy does right and I soon learned that even if an emergency call came in, and say, some loon or doccie needed emergency treatment for a heart attack or vertical vein strip or something just as life-threatening, well, because of that dang bureaucracy I'd just sit there and eat my sausage and egg sandwich and to hell with all those the bastards."
Franco frowned. "So, you'd let people die?" he said. "For a muffin?"
"Oh yes," beamed Zegg. "They're all moaning whining cripples anyway, every last one of them using our dang Air Ambulances as a taxi service from one continent to another. I realised that if I made them suffer, as you do, then they'd never try it again oh no so they wouldn't."
"That's because they'd be dead," pointed out Franco.
"A valid point, yes, but, and let's be frank here, there's not really many people worth saving, are there?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I'd save another Para-Medic, of course, that's a life worth saving, but when you get old, well you kind of deserve to die, and anybody who abuses stuff, drugs and stuff, and alcohol and stuff, they deserve to die as well, and anybody of a different species," he looked aghast for a moment, "I mean, you know, those non-humans, those damn stinking aliens. They all smell, you know. That alien smell. In the Para-Medics, we call it the ali-smell."
"So aliens deserve to die?" said Fizzy.
"Of course! Don't you think?"
"Well that solves that problem," snapped Franco. "We wondered how Sick World had folded all those centuries ago; with guys like Zegg at the helm, how could it not work?" But Franco's sarcasm was lost, for Zegg was off on another rant connected with a] the superiority of the Para-Medics, and b] the inferiority of everyone and everything else.
"When we go into battle now, we, as Para-Medics, are united! We are totally united! We have developed the much-feared Wheelchair-Bomb, Scatter Shells, Urine Clusters and Iodine Grenades! We are the most incredible air unit ever to fly a zeppelin across a planet!"
There came an odd squeaking sound, and Franco squirmed uncomfortably in his nurse outfit with just that little bit too much PVC.
"Are you OK?"
"Aye, just this g-string bit," he grunted, and tugged, "riding high."
"Ahhh, g-strings," said Zegg, his eyes glazing as his banana-head glistened. Condensation from high-altitude clouds seemed to settle on his large bulbous protrusion. "We're a big fan of g-strings in the Para-Medics. There isn't a Para-Medic who can't remove a g-string with his teeth, blindfolded. And talking of removing underwear with his teeth..." He beamed at Olga. "Hey, you, chunky, I can stick this baby on AutoP. We could nip back to the Bedchambers, I can show you what a Para-Medic is truly capable of!" He winked, just so she got the idea.
"Not now," said Olga. "I have ze headache."
"That's a dang shame," said Zegg, rubbing at his engorged crotch. "Back when I worked the Air Ambulance service, there wasn't an ill, stunned, depraved or unconscious patient who wouldn't lie back and think of the Greater Glory. Ahhh, those were the days. What about you?" He pointed at Fizzy, but she shook her head, face a stony glare. "And you?"
"Sorry," said Shazza.
"This is very, very unusual," said Zegg, frowning, his hands on the controls of the zeppelin. "I've not been turned down for a bit of rear-end sexual coupling for hundreds of years now! And Sabrina's porn squad are usually the hottest little hottie nurse chicks on the block. You dig?"
Finally, his gaze came to rest on Franco, who was squirming uncomfortably amidst a series of squeaking sounds, his face contorted in a parody of pain. "So then," said Zegg, forcing a smile which looked wrong on his face. "What about you, sexy bearded nurse type?"
"You can kiss my big hairy arse, dildo-head!" snarled Franco, as behind him Shazza and Fizzy slowly placed their heads in their hands and closed their eyes in horror. Oh no, they thought. In these circumstances Franco can not and will not shut up...
"What is this insolence?" snapped Zegg. "What is this insubordination? Nurse hotties do not talk like this!"
Franco was still squirming, his tight uniform still squeaking, and the seemingly sentient bit of tight white cloth chose that moment to pop a button. The button, from beneath his crotch, went ping, and flew across the cockpit catching Paddy a stinging sting to his lopsided jelly-bean forehead.
From Franco's groin area erupted his disjointed, squashed and severely abused Mr Roger. His ASDA underpants were all scrunched up to one side, and Franco panted at this sudden welcome release from tight-crotch agony.
"Ahhhhh..." said Franco.
"Wow, baby," beamed Olga.
"Hey!" snapped Zegg. "You got a dick! Nurses don't got dicks! What you doing, having a dick? You shouldn't have no dick in your pants. I was going to explore your pants! The horror of the dick!"
Franco pumped his shotgun. He assumed the Game Was Up, and gave a big beaming grin. "Shit," he said. "You've sussed me there, bozo. The cop's a fair one. You have me bang-to-rights, guv'nor."
"Get the imposters!" screamed Zegg.
Franco fired the D5's quad-barrels, and Zegg's head was neatly removed and deposited in a thousand pieces around the cockpit interior. Franco whirled
on the remaining soldiers - numbering perhaps a thousand. They stood up, in perfect unity, as a single well-honed military battalion, and with a synchronisation that would make aerial display teams weep.
They brought about weapons, and aimed them, as one, at Franco.
"Help?" suggested Franco, and in panic fired his D5 with a savage quad smash...
As the Buggy, still growling, still decelerating, was consumed by the Rockfall and the terrible darkness of the storm swamped them, so thousands of huge boulders fell around Keenan and his prisoners, pounding the beach into instant oblivion. Face grim, as if in a trance, blocking out Ed and Snake's screams and howls as they pulled frantically against their bindings, Keenan guided the Buggy left, then right, following some unseen sine curve which weaved an almost mystical path between the quick succession of falling, thumping boulders. Nothing touched the Buggy, no rock large or small; all fell wide, or were left in the wake of Keenan's psychic cruise...
"What are you doing?" growled Cam.
"I've... no idea."
"What's guiding you?"
Keenan threw Cam a wild grin. "Must be my alien blood."
"Well, something wants to keep you alive!"
"You... don't... fucking say."
"I can fix the engine."
"Do it."
"But it'll reduce operational life expectancy."
"You'll burn it out?"
"Aye. But we'll clear the Rockfall."
"Do it!"
Cam, spinning fast, leapt forward and, with tiny extruded grippers, wrenched free the Buggy's bonnet revealing a huge pulsing behemoth of an engine within. Buckled, the bonnet flew off over the Buggy and was instantly crushed in the violent Rockfall. Cam dropped into the engine compartment, integrated with a grind into the vehicle's injection system, and knowing this would disintegrate the physical engine in just a few short minutes, slammed the engine full of fuel, nitrous, and PK5. The Buggy lurched forward with incredible acceleration, howling, body panels vibrating. Keenan clung on for dear life, teeth grinding, following his path of magic through the Rockfall and within a few seconds they burst free, leaving the darkness, and the hammering boulders, behind...
The Buggy continued accelerating, suspension pounding, six huge wheels eating ruts and slamming across the flat beach in a blur of speed and noise and fire. Sparks erupted from exhausts alongside spiralling slivers of shaved pistons.
Grimly, Cam continued to pump his heady cocktail mix into the injection system... until he saw the Silglace ahead.
The tail of the glacier towered four thousand feet in the air, a huge wall of white and glinting silver, veined, embedded with ice-trapped rocks, and completely at odds, at a violent contrast, with the desert. The glacier snaked off as far as the eye could see, and rather than being swallowed by the ocean, it was the Silglace which was doing the swallowing, an ice fist so vast it created its own weather and gravity and magnetic pull. Keenan watched, mouth open in awe. Never had he seen a wall of ice so huge. It was like approaching a sheer vertical mountain, a cliff so vast it filled his vision from left to right, dipping into the sea a little and meandering off like its own discrete continent.
"Hell," said Keenan, softly.
"You saved us!" screamed Ed, laughing manically.
"Not so fast," snapped Keenan, and nodded ahead.
Where the beach, sea and glacier converged in an unholy triumvirate of churning water, burning sand and stoic ice, so a huge chamber became visible, like a mouth scar at the foot of the Silglace. It was an opening, a cave a whole kilometre wide, a dark and cool and threateningly unwelcome maw. The beach turned to frozen sand within a few short feet, and on that ice-rimed desert sat the IceTanks and a scattering of soldiers.
"They shelter in the Silglace," realised Keenan, chewing his lips. His hands vibrated on the Buggy's wheel. More fire belched from exhausts, and the engine, like some dying shrieking animal, started pissing oil in a long sick slick from a fast-melted sump...
"Cam, are they friendly?"
Before the PopBot could answer, bullets started popping and pinging around them, several glancing from the Buggy's cracked and battered windshield but failing to penetrate. Keenan ducked involuntarily, and there came a sudden krump from one of the IceTanks and Keenan dragged on the steering, the Buggy slewing on sand, tyres churning. A crater appeared in an explosion of frozen sand and ice needles which rattled across the Buggy. More krumps filled the air, but they were moving too fast, leaving a long oil slick in their wake as the Buggy screamed at the IceTanks and the soldiers, who Keenan could see wearing large black oily suits and gas masks with thick rubber tubes leading from mouth to chest packs. The soldiers scattered as the Buggy roared at them, leaping a sand dune and sailing over the arc of tanks with ratchet-clicking guns trying vainly to track their leap. The Buggy landed, grinding out on suspension, clanging and banging and sliding sideways, wheels churning, hot oil spray arcing out as Keenan fought vicious controls to send them howling into the dark of the crescent-mouth cave.
Cam appeared in the black. "She's gonna blow!" he screeched, and zipped at Snake, and Ed, cutting their bonds with a flicker of laser.
They swept into the cool interior of the Silglace, twilight killed by a switch. "Jump!" bellowed Keenan. They leapt from the Buggy in a tangle of mad confusion and noise and heat and spraying oil, hitting the frozen ground hard with thumps and rolling, stunned, as the Buggy slammed a solid wall of ice and detonated. Fire roared, billowing out over the three cowering men. Hot twisted panels of metal scythed through the air, and rattled from distant walls of ice. Heat gusted through the cavern. Fire swept along the trail of oil and out from the cave towards the charging masked soldiers, what Cam had dubbed Cryo Medics. More fire roared outside, and soldiers were consumed by fire as a huge wall of flames seared through their ranks and the Rockfall, catching up on the fleeing Buggy, pounded the IceTanks and men and set about nibbling at the edges of the vast glacier, the monolithic mountain of ice that defied nature and gave a middle finger salute to the sun.
Keenan groaned, and rolled onto his back, coughing on acrid fumes inhaled from the fire. Everything hurt. Pain slammed up and down him like an elephant dancing on his bones. There came a click, and Keenan opened his eyes to see Snake's face, worryingly close, his eye-patch torn showing an angry red socket within, face scratched and streaked with oil and smoke and grime, his battered, trembling hands holding a D5 up close, the barrel under Keenan's chin.
"Funny how things turn out," he spat, and rocked back on his heels. "Tell that bastard Cam no funny business." He kept the weapon tight under Keenan's chin and moved behind the Combat-K squad leader, holding him close, eyes scanning the smoke and gloom, his features flickering red in firelight.
"Those soldiers will be on us in a few minutes," said Keenan, voice calm. He couldn't see Cam, but noted Ed had gathered the rest of the weapons and held them, crouched, looking nervously about.
"I wasn't planning on going back outside," said Snake, with a hiss. Ed was searching around the burning debris of the Buggy. The flames had died down now, but thick smoke still filled the air, acrid and evil.
"Here's Cam," said Ed, to a twitching, nervous, hairline-trigger Snake. Ed tapped the blackened, singed, smoke-damaged PopBot with the toe of his boot. "Little bastard's dead. Well, we can hope, right?" He gave a bitter laugh, looking to Snake for some kind of peer-group approval.
Keenan looked on with dark, shadowed eyes.
"There!" hissed a voice from the smoke, and bullets roared around the three men who ducked in reflex, rounds crashing around them - only, they weren't really rounds.
"What the hell are they shooting?" shouted Ed, as rattles ricocheted from the ice wall behind him.
"Who cares!" growled Snake, and opened fire into the smoke, quad-barrels screaming harsh screams of smoke and promised death. There were grunts from the smoke, and the thud of a body hitting rock. "This way," snapped Snake, taking charge, and prodding Keenan before him.
Keenan moved
off into the dark, lit dimly by silver veins in the glowing ice, and a light that seemed to appear from a million miles away. With Snake and Ed behind him, growling, twitchy, heavily-armed, Keenan allowed himself to be cajoled along... after all, he thought with a smile, it was the direction he wanted to travel.
The cave narrowed, roof dropping, until it was a glowing tunnel of ice unnaturally carved. With Ed taking a rearward defensive position, his guns booming every thirty seconds or so, they moved into and below this glacier, the Silglace, following the narrow tunnel until it emerged on the banks of an underground river.
A river of mercury. A river of silver. Just like the Junkala King had promised.
There was no sound from the underground tributary, just a lazy wide flow of liquid metal. And bizarrely, it flowed away from the sea. Towards the heart of the glacier. A place Keenan, with his alien intuition, knew he had to now explore. Would it surrender VOLOS to him? He smiled. He doubted it.
"What you grinning about, monkey?" snapped Ed.
Keenan shrugged. "Careful where you wave that thing, Ed. You might take off your own damn head."
"If you don't shut your mouth, I promise I'll remove yours."
"Ed, shut it," snapped Snake. He was looking left and right along the narrow, winding banks of the river, unsure of which path to take.
"If you go left, you'll emerge into the ocean," said Keenan softly.
"And how the hell would you know?"
"Cam told me."
"What about the other way?"
"The Silglace, the Heart of the Glacier."
Snake peered at him suspiciously, his uncovered eyeless socket reddened and irritable. He rubbed at the socket, making it weep, then scratched his stubble. "If it's a trap, dickhead, I'll blow your head off."
"Really? You don't say."
"I haven't forgotten how you killed Maximux." His voice was soft, eye gleaming. "Go on. Follow the river."