by Andy Remic
"And you look... like a porn-star nurse."
Franco stared down at his tight-fitting nurse attire, then grinned even wider as Keenan rolled his neck and shoulders, pulled out his small silver case, and rolled a cigarette with Widow Maker tobacco.
"Hot damn, I forgot how sexy and chic I appear to your average common mortal man." He coughed. In a whisper, he added, "I don't normally dress like this, y'know?"
"Hey." Keenan held up a hand, watching as Pippa, Fizzy, Shazza, Betezh and Olga all trooped down the ladder, one by one, the whole frame shaking madly under Olga's immense weight. "Each to his own, buddy. Different cultures, different customs, yeah?"
"It's still damn good to see you." Franco punched Keenan's shoulder, and Keenan groaned, touching the place tenderly.
"Just lay off the violence. I feel like Olga stomped my head." He eyed the group of ragtag nurses and bedraggled squaddies. Snake stood to one side, uneasy now, realising the odds had switched, and were somewhat against him.
Pippa stepped close to Keenan. "We came for you."
Keenan nodded, lighting his smoke. "Thank you." He glanced around. "Thanks, all of you. I can see by your appearance you've all been through the wars; but we'll have time for swapping adventures soon enough." His eyes narrowed. "Where's Mel?"
"She died," said Franco, voice a little strangled.
Keenan placed his hand on Franco's shoulder. "I'm sorry about that, buddy. Real sorry. She'd been through a lot of shit with us; she was a part of our team. One of us. Combat K."
"Yes," said Franco, voice unnaturally quiet. He had lost his usual bubbling bounciness. "She was my true love."
Keenan took a deep breath, pushing it from his mind. He had other priorities; like their impending slaughter, and the desecration of the planet during the last thousand years. "Now," he glanced up, "we have to follow the map. We have a direction. We have a goal. A purpose."
"We do?" said Pippa, moving close, voice barely more than a whisper. She was close enough to lean forward, to kiss him. Keenan stared deep into her cold grey eyes, saw the insane tangle of hatred and love, or gentleness and violence, and he smiled. He drew on his cigarette, and Pippa gave a little cough that made his smile widen. It was always the little things that touched him.
"We're gonna find the bastard who did this to the planet; to Sick World. He's called VOLOS." Keenan crouched, touching the ice floor. "He lives deep down, beneath the planet crust, deep within the rock. He helped create the junks, or rather, deviated an existing species into what the junks became. They were once a proud, fine race, a species of humility and love and culture. He knows everything about the junks. He knows their weakness. And, well, VOLOS twisted this place. Twisted the Junkala. He made Sick World, and the sick deviants who inhabit it. VOLOS changed the doctors, the nurses, the patients - turned them into the sorrowful horrors we have all faced."
"So we're going down?" said Franco.
"No jokes," said Pippa, glancing back at him.
Franco's face was straight. "Would I?"
She laughed. "Yeah, deviant, you would."
"Hey, that's a gross misrepri... misrapre... a wrongful presentation of my intentions, that is. So it is."
Snake moved forward, still uneasy, his gun almost facing the ground as if worried he might suddenly be pounced upon. He glanced at Keenan, and at the array of hardware bristling before him. The odds had well and truly shifted.
"What about me?"
Keenan stared at him. Something hard and cold in his heart pushed to the surface, but he forced it away. His senses screamed at him to put a bullet in Snake's brain. But he could not. Would not.
"You've got a reprieve, fucker. For now."
"Do you want my gun?"
"Not yet. Just make sure you don't wave it near me, or I might get the wrong idea and blow your motherfucking head off. Yeah?"
"Yeah, Keenan."
Keenan stared at the ceiling. Then around, at the reunited squaddies. "Well, guys. It's time to go to work."
Keenan sat cross-legged on the floor in the exact centre of the chamber. Surrounding him stood the remnants of Combat K, battered, bruised, but defiant and hard and unyielding.
Keenan closed his eyes, felt himself drifting, felt the pulse of alien blood in his veins. And when he opened his eyes he was alone and this place was a million years distant. Cold ice-smoke drifted across the floor, and everything seemed... new, gleaming, bright. He stared up, tracing golden line through the ice, and it shifted subtly and rotated and he felt something in his mind go click and then was back in the present, and he could see both images superimposed and he knew. Knew the way. The way down to VOLOS...
"Follow me," he said, standing.
"Where are we going?"
Keenan took a deep breath, eyeing each soldier one by one by one. "Below this chamber lies the Asylum. A thousand years ago it was the secret project of Sick World, the deformed child locked in the cellar, the embarrassment brushed under the rug. When things started going wrong, going bad, they tried to put it right. But because of money," he spat the word, "and sponsors, they kept on going, kept on trying to make Sick World the premier service for getting people and aliens well; and taking their hard earned dollars in the process."
"But some went mad," said Pippa, eyebrows raised.
"I'm not sure. But I'm warning you now, whatever's down there, down in the Asylum, what they called Ward 1 - well, it's going to be a thousand times worse than anything else we've experienced. They sealed it off, in the end. Before Sick World was evacuated. They sealed it off and left everyone in it to die... deep beneath the world, beneath the layers of strata... and you only do that for one reason. When there's no other way. Now. I understand if anyone, and I mean anyone, chooses to stay up here, near the surface. You can return to the last SLAM ship, protect it against deviant nurses, whatever. Nobody should have to witness what we're going to suffer beneath Sick World's supposed normality."
Keenan didn't look at Franco, but could feel the ginger squaddie's eyes boring into his skull. He turned, finally, when Franco made a little strangled sound, like a cat in a bag tossed into a canal.
"You mean we're going down into an age-old mental hospital? A big underground one? One full of loonies?"
"Yeah, a very secretive and a very bad one."
"And you got all that from the sparkly roof map?"
"Let's just say I was inspired," whispered Keenan.
Franco paused. It was a painful pause; like a fart in a lift, or bared bollocks at a wedding ceremony. Finally, he said, "But I'm only a little fella," his voice the squeakiest of mewling mewls.
"That's what I mean," said Keenan, not unkindly. "There's no shame in staying behind to protect our single exit path from the planet; after all, it could become a bigger warzone up there than... the deviated place down here, beneath. Under our boots. And in the darkest recesses of our minds."
Franco considered this, and met the gaze of Fizzy, Shazza, then Olga; he connected with Snake, and Betezh, and finally with Pippa, who gave him a little smile, an honest smile, which was a rarity to see on her cruel, snarling face. Franco puffed out his chest, and took a deep breath. He noted with some pleasure that Betezh looked deeply uncomfortable, squirming beneath his scarred skin, for it was Betezh who had been instrumental in breaking Franco's spirit at the Mount Pleasant home for the "mentally challenged". Betezh had done a lot of bad things. He carried shame like a badge.
"I'm coming with you," said Franco.
"It'll be dangerous, and mad," growled Keenan.
"Hey, they don't call me Franco 'Kick Danger in the Balls' Haggis for nothing, you know, mate. I'm with you; all of you. Right to the fucking end, and beyond. Just show me where to sign." He bared his teeth; more in horror than smile.
"Good man!" Keenan slapped him on the back. "Pippa?"
"Yeah, Kee?"
"Get that airship primed. We're going in. We're gonna need lots of missiles, lots of guns..." he smiled wryly, "and a big fucking sense of humour
."
"I'm on it, boss."
Keenan watched the ragtag squad climbing the ladder, until he stood alone on the ice amidst chilled corpses of massacred Cryo Medics. He stared again at the shifting map, and saw again the imprint of VOLOS's face melded into the contact points, the contour lines, the geographical features of mountain and lake and valley. Instinctively, he realised VOLOS was a part of this place, a part of this world; as old as the rocks, the trees, the ice, the deserts, the mountains.
VOLOS was, perhaps, the greatest foe they had ever faced.
"I'm coming for you, fucker," said Keenan, stamping out his cigarette. In grim silence, he climbed the swinging ladder.
PART III
THIS IS HARDCORE
CHAPTER TWELVE
PSYCHOIATRY
Through ancient ice tunnels they cruised, silent, reverent, passing through halls of ice lit by distant eerie light, sparkling blue and white, filtered through towering cliffs of ice, through walls of snow, through chilled stalactites and waterfalls locked in stasis for a thousand years. Keenan, Franco and Pippa leant on the Zeppelin3's rails, breath smoking, eyes shifting uneasily as occasional cracks echoed through the vast tunnels, the gargantuan halls, the blue tinged caverns of a perpetually shifting, easing, crawling glacier.
"It's so big," said Pippa, whispering, because somehow to speak loudly seemed very wrong.
"We are intruders," nodded Franco.
"You two have a vivid imagination," snapped Keenan, and glanced back, where Olga sat with a shotgun pressed nonchalantly against Snake's side; not in a direct threat, but more as an act of suggestion. A suggestion of murder if he put a greasy weasel fox-foot wrong.
They cruised for a day, through endless tunnels and halls, but one constant remained, a trait which every vast space, every narrow corridor, shared. They travelled downwards; sometimes it was nothing more than a gentle decent, sometimes vast vertical cylinders seemingly scooped from the ice by precision machinery. As they descended one such vertical tube, Keenan pointed to rails set in the ice. Old rails, glinting like brass in the beams of their gun lights.
"Nobody would be that crazy," said Franco, uneasily, watching the rails thrum past. "What idiot would want to build a base down here?"
"Not a base," said Keenan. "A hospital. The original hospital, the first hospital and the last hospital. Ward 1. The original Sick World; where all this madness began. It's down here somewhere. Towards the core."
"The walls are too neat," said Pippa. She held her PAD, which was fluctuating wildly between differing states of operational status. A thin blue laser shot from the PAD and bounced from ice walls, then spun in a circle of piercing sharpness. Then died. Pippa read the results. "It's a perfect cylinder," she said. "It's impossible this was formed naturally; this tunnel was excavated. By machines."
"Were they mining, do you think?" said Keenan.
"For what?" frowned Franco, shivering a little. Then he perked up a bit. "Maybe it was for gold."
"Maybe it was for death," said Keenan, and lit a cigarette. Smoke trailed up above them, into a deep velvet, blue infinity.
"You're a proper miserable bugger, going and ruining my fantasy like that," mumbled Franco. Still in his nurse uniform, his skin was going gradually blue, but he stubbornly refused extra clothing, exclaiming that a real man, a proper man, a macho man could put up with any excess of chill.
"Yes," pointed out Pippa. "Right up to the point when you're dead."
Keenan shrugged, and smoked, and watched the descent.
They dropped a long, long way.
The Zeppelin3 bobbed to a halt. They were lost in yet another vast cavern system, a star sparkling in the centre of the galaxy; but this time it was different. This time, on the ice floor far below, something gleamed.
"Take us in slowly," said Keenan.
Nodding, Pippa scrolled dials and the airship lowered, engines a rhythmical thrumming. Super-cool air streamed past. What looked like tiny toys on the ground eventually enlarged, and it was with stunned awe Combat-K realised just how big the machines actually were. They weren't just big; they were vast.
The Zeppelin3 bobbed above them, and even Paddy made an effort to stand up and hobble to the side of the airship, bound tight in SnapWire, nose teeth peering over the edge, chattering.
"What is zey?" rumbled Olga, eventually, the first one to break the silence.
They gazed over the sea of machines, perhaps five thousand in all, glinting silver, and black, some with swirls of red; many of the huge cubes and rectangular alloy blocks contained odd blade attachments - each blade the length of an eighty-storey skyscraper - and each one looked positively lethal, on a world-building scale.
"I think we just found the excavation equipment," said Keenan, rubbing his hands together despite his WarSuit. The cold was really getting to him. He was a tropical kind of guy.
"I wonder if they still work?" said Franco, oddly.
Pippa looked sideways at him, aware of Franco's obsession with machines, and engineering in general. Motorbikes, cars, rocket ships, guns; Franco got a regular hard-on for anything that went click. "Why would you ask that?" she said.
"Just wondering," he smiled.
"Don't even be getting the stupid idea," snapped Pippa, frowning.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Franco, who'd crashed more QGM Warships, Cruisers, Shuttles and SLAMs than the entire QGM Crash Test Fleet put together. Whilst Franco loved machines, it would appear machines did not always love Franco.
"Yes, I'm sure you do," said Pippa, "you've got that bloody glint in your eye, like the time you ran that ten million tonne oil tanker up the Jajunga Beach on Kimo, knocking over three hotels and ruining a lot of beach holidays. Including the QG Mayor's."
"Hey," said Franco, "that was the controls, that was. An illogical layout."
"No Franco, it was your lack of control at the controls, dickhead. So, and you listen good my little ginger friend, the last bloody thing we need is you taking control of a fucking machine capable of ploughing down to the core of the planet. You hear what I'm saying? Sick World is unstable enough as it is without a mad burrowing ginger maggot cutting holes through entire tectonic plates."
"I am sure," said Franco, primly, "that I don't know what you're talking about. However," he turned and stared at Pudson, leaning over the rail, vertical eyes blinking in the cold ice air, "I'm a-wondering if he does."
Franco scampered over to Pudson, and shoved a Kekra quad-barrel machine pistol in his face. Pudson gawped, stupidly, like somebody with a machine gun in his mouth.
"Talk, muppet."
"What would you like me to say?" It was more whine than speech, and subtly impeded by inches of ice-rimed steel. However, Paddy made a good effort at answering the question.
"What are those machines?"
"For digging. Can't you see?"
"How long have they been here?"
"Longer than us humans."
Franco stared at the deformed freak before him. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. He wanted to say, "Human? You're a bloody long way from being human, mate," but instead focused on his questioning. "Do they still work?"
"I don't know that," said Pudson. "I've never seen them before. I've only heard rumours. Legends, if you like. There was supposed to be a place deep under the ice where the World Builders stored equipment." Pudson went suddenly red, and snapped his mouth shut.
Franco prodded him. "Tell me more."
"No."
"I'll toss you over the side."
"If you do, I'll... I'll... I'll kill you!"
"How? You'll have been tossed over the side! Idiot!"
Paddy Pudson looked suddenly crafty, quite a feat on such a deformed facial construct. "I wasn't going to do it now," he whined, like a kid deprived of a jelly baby. "I know what I'm doing, I am. Oh yes. I'm playing the long waiting game, you see. I'm patient. I will have my fame and fortune and gory glory gold one day! I'll be great! You'll see! It's called the long waiting gam
e. It's always worked for me. Waiting works, you see? You see, don't you?" He grinned like a maniac, which surely he was.
Franco withdrew, returned to Keenan, and scowled at the hunched form of Paddy Pudson, crusted with ice, eyes gleaming malevolently as he stared down at the trillion-tonne machinery below, presumably used to excavate these vast caverns through which Combat-K now travelled like a worm through a rotten apple.
"What a fool," said Franco. "Fame and fortune? The only fame and fortune he's going to achieve is on the end of my fucking boot. What do you think, Keenan?"
"I think we're nearly there."
"Nearly where?"
"Look."
The Zeppelin3 had been drifting as Franco had his little chat with Pudson, and a wall like a cliff face reared above them, shearing off in a gentle curve into the distance of this ersatz interior sky. At the base, where the vast machines ended, they were replaced by fields of trucks, freight containers and tanks, all ancient, all coated in thousands of years of frost and ice. And here, Combat K could see an arch so vast they could pass fifty Zeppelin3s beneath its wonderful stone curve.
On the zenith of the arch, in kilometre high letters, was an ancient carving.
It read: WARD 1.
"We're here," said Keenan. "Get your shit together. We're going in."
"It's creepy," said Franco, as they floated near-silent beneath the arch. "It's spooky. It's freaky. It's giving me the heebie jeebies."
"Shut up," said Pippa between clenched teeth, her gun trained on... a wall. Of black ice. Slowly, they descended and touched down on rock. Behind, a cold wind howled through the Ward 1 archway, and before them, in the mountain-sized mass of humped cubic black ice, was a normal, white, hospital ward set of swing-doors. They were tiny, a sparkling contrast, like a diamond lost against the backdrop of a galaxy.
"Looks fishy," said Franco.
"As well as creepy, spooky and freaky?" snapped Pippa. "Gods, Franco, can't you learn to keep your big flapping mouth shut?"