by Andy Remic
But the world wasn't fine. They were moving faster and faster and faster, and the curve became a ball into which they sank, or sliced, down and down through layers of hospital beds, through stacks of arched bedside tables, and Keenan ran to the front of the carriage and bellowed, "Lunatrick! What the hell's going on?"
"Don't worry," boomed Lunatrick, his fat jowls wobbling under his huge beard. "We have to accelerate to enter the Globular Plain, we need to dissect the Layers to get to the Upsamid. It's a protection mechanism, to keep out unwanted thingies, just sit back and relax, and let old Uncle Lunatrick guide you."
Keenan slumped back, and felt the curvature pinning him to one side of the carriage. They were all holding on now, grasping brass door handles and black leather seat-straps as the pull of G-force edged them across the carriage towards the right-hand side... all except Franco, who sat perfectly still, unmoving, staring at the other members of Combat-K in shock and horror, with maybe a sprinkling of confetti confusion and a big dollop of craziness.
"What the damn and bloody unicorn-radish hell are you all playing at?" he snapped. "Are you all crazee, or something?"
And that was it, Keenan realised. They weren't insane, but were entering a place of insanity - a distillation of madness. And in that place, only the truly insane could happily exist. Keenan ground his teeth under the agony of forced pressure, eyes fixed in jealousy on Franco's relaxed body, his wrinkled brow, his flexing fingers ready to come to the aid of his dodgy and quite obviously ill friends in need...
"You mad bastard," muttered Keenan, and to the rattling shrieking clanking of the engine and carriage, he was forced away from reality, and passed out, and rattled on into a seemingly endless oblivion.
Cam sat on the bottom of the Silglace river and was trapped, pinned down, made a prisoner. He felt the savage acids attacking his case, organic and intelligent in their simple methanol-based intelligence, but he was smug in the knowledge that they could do nothing to penetrate his advanced shell and bodywork. He was not simple flesh and bone, but a PopBot! Yes! A War Machine! He had survived Biohell! He was, it had to be said, a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450. I have integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and some severe Put Down[tm] War Technology. He grinned. He knew it.
However.
The Silglace, vegetable-sentient, knew it was having little effect on the invader; thick tendrils of silver mucus encased Cam, and held him there, pinned to the bottom as he frantically sought a power source from which to scour a recharge.
After a billion possibilities, Cam realised with a start, and a seeping feeling of dread, that there was no central power source, no wholesome seat of energy to which he could attach, vampiric, and drain the host of valuable resources.
No.
And without power, Cam would never be able to prime his motors to break free of the Silglace's pull. They were entwined, locked together, and if the Silglace so chose, it would last for an eternity... or until his shell eventually rotted and crumbled to powder.
"Bugger," he said. "I buggered this one up." It seemed the most succinct response.
He sat for a while, angry with himself, fuming with himself, and wondering what the hell he could do.
All comms were down. Except the spinal-logic pulse idea. But that, hell, that only worked on humans, right?
Cam gave himself a smile. He had an idea.
He sent a pulse using the Silglace as a carrier.
And thousands of kilometres away, something snoring woke up.
Keenan awoke slowly, as if from a Sunday morning slumber. The world was fuzzy, a distillation of disorientation. His mouth felt like feathers. His eyeballs were stuck to their sockets. He groaned, and sat up with wooden teeth and tartan thoughts, to see the rest of the squad similarly coming around as if from a toxic anaesthetic. He glanced back, but the train was nowhere to be seen - only Lunatrick, big and fat and grinning, with his rainbow robes billowing, his eyes sparkling. He scratched enthusiastically at his beard.
"Come on, come on! Up up up! We have a long way to go!"
Keenan glanced to where Lunatrick pointed, across an undulating white landscape to the distant bulk of the Upsamid. He squinted, but could make out no details through an early morning haze. Impossible, right? We're inside the planet, inside Sick World, how can there be a bloody atmosphere?
Franco bounded up, and punched Keenan on the arm. Keenan winced, because Franco had a powerful right straight, as befitted a pugilist.
"Ey up!" he said. "Look here! And to our benefit, we're no longer inside that cock."
"It was a train, Franco."
Franco pouted. "Looked like a big ol' cock to me! And the only cock I want to get inside is, an, an, an, um..."
"Yes?" said Pippa, sweetly, moving beside Franco. "So you do fancy a slice of Man Pie every now and again?"
"I didn't say that!"
"You suggested that there was a type of cock you'd like to get inside. Now, whilst I'm not quite sure how one would accomplish such a feat, I'm sure you'd give it your best shot, Franco, little buddy. Ain't that so?"
"No!" he went red. "I'm being misrepresented!"
"You misrepresent yourself," snapped Keenan. "Fizzy, Shazza, Snake, I want you up front with Lunatrick. I've got a nasty feeling about this place, and I like to trust my intuition. Betezh?"
"Yeah?" Betezh had been quiet for a while, and seemed to be nursing a hangover.
Keenan stared at him. "Have you been drinking?"
"No! Well, yes. Just a little."
"What did you drink?" said Keenan through gritted teeth.
"Just a bit of voddie. To warm myself, you know, against the cold."
"And where the fuck," said Keenan, "did you manage to get vodka in this desolate shit-hole?"
Betezh glanced at Franco. Keenan turned. Franco was whistling a little tune.
"Well?"
"Look Keenan, it was just a nip, alreet? Found it in a locker. T'was medicinal vodka, so that's all right, isn't it, because we were just using a medicine, not the alcohol, reet?" He beamed, as Keenan pushed past him roughly, and followed the ambling mass of Lunatrick across the - now he thought about it - soft white landscape.
"If you two idiots drink again on my mission, you'll be going home with your balls in your rucksack. You understand?"
"Yes Keenan."
"Yes Keenan."
Franco leant in close to Betezh, and whispered, "He's a damn spoil-sport, the old grump."
The world was filled with a diffused glow, and Pippa found herself staring hard at the sky. It was curved, gently curved, and she felt as if she stood inside a snow globe, peering out. The more she looked, the more her eyes decoded what she saw; the whole sky was a tapestry of tiny ward beds, millions of them, forming a hazy bright pattern.
"You see the sky?" she said.
"I'm worried more about the ground," said Keenan. He paused, knelt, and touched the white. Then, he pulled off his glove and squeezed the substance. "It's a hospital sheet," he said, glancing up at Pippa with a frown. "Rolling, like desert sand dunes. But the whole thing is white cotton, soft to the touch."
"Strange."
"Odd."
They moved off, following Lunatrick. They seemed to walk for a very long time across the squishy, padded, cotton floor. Above, from different angles, as if witnessed through a sky-size diamond, different facets of Ward 1 could be witnessed on angular planes. It was disconcerting, as if the world had gone mad; as if the sky had deformed and forgotten its insanity pill. They approached a dark forest, which spread on their left up the flanks of a hill. It was only as the squad grew close they realised that what they saw were not, in fact, trees.
"What is that?" said Pippa, squinting.
Franco stared. He had the best eyesight in the group, as befitted the official sniper. "They're hypodermic needles," he said, eventually.
"How do you mean?"
"The trees," replied Franco wi
th a tight smile. "The trunks are made up of thick hypodermic needles, and each branch is a twisted needle. Each needle drips fluid from its tip, and the leaves are... are..." He scowled.
"Yeah?"
"Sanitary pads," he said, face straight, eyes just a touch glazed.
"So the landscape is medicinal," said Keenan. "It's taken on the characteristics of the hospital. The land itself has changed into an organic version of the medical. This is complete warped madness."
"Or logical," said Franco.
"What do you mean?"
"The entire technology, machine guns, weapons, all of it is based on hospital technology. It seems like the whole planet, the whole of Sick World has absorbed what data it can and modelled itself. Look!" Franco pointed, and they all stopped, lining the banks of the narrow river. To one side, distant, was a bridge spanning the thick flowing grey water. The bridge was made from a giant leg-straightening brace, complete with leather straps and rods controlled by screws. It shone like new chrome.
Pippa knelt by the river edge, dipped her finger in the water.
"Wait," said Franco. "Don't taste it. It ain't water."
"What is it?"
"Morphine," Franco grinned amiably. "I recognise the smell. It's one of my smells of choice. And they don't call me Franco 'Bloodhound' Haggis for nothing, you know. I can smell a poppy from a thousand mile mountain top. I can smell the cheese from a goat's teat. Baby, I can smell sex." He leered for a moment, but Lunatrick lumbered over to them. He appeared nervous, which looked just plain wrong on his huge bearded face.
"What is it?" said Keenan.
"We must hurry. We have company."
"What kind of company?"
"Bad company," snapped Lunatrick, frowning. Even as he spoke, the last syllable was drowned by a massive, distant concussive crack. Instinctively, everybody looked up and through the millions of facets of the sky, saw a surge of activity, flashes of colour, and more bright violent explosions.
Lunatrick, wobbling now at a fast run, and surprising everybody by his sheer turn of speed, ran for the bridge. They crossed the chrome expanse with its flapping leather brace straps, and then headed closer to the hypodermic trees and on towards the Upsamid.
Lunatrick was panting hard, now, and a muffled sound followed them. It was the sound of machine guns, the roar of detonation, the crack of HighJ explosives. There was a battle being fought in the underground realm of Ward 1.
"They're invading," panted Lunatrick, face serious and dour. "The bastards! I never thought they would invade."
"Who's invading?" said Franco.
"The deviated doctors and nurses, from above. VOLOS's armies! They know you are down here. They want to stop you, halt you from finding the path to VOLOS. But they are too late!" His eyes shone with triumph.
More booms echoed, and ahead of the group the Upsamid grew quickly huge. It was black, slick, frosted with ice. It was a pyramid, but completely inverted and standing on its tip. From ground level, the tip of the upside-down pyramid's slick smooth walls travelled outwards towards its massive base high in the sky, probably a kilometre in width. Like an impossibility of engineering, the Upsamid hung stable and solid. It drew their eyes, and twisted their minds, like a geometric puzzle made real. Strangely, being upside down, the Upsamid seemed more solid, more frighteningly... real.
"I'm not going in that," snapped Franco.
"Why not? You've been up a few weird and wonderful pipes in your time," smiled Pippa.
"Shut up."
Cracks of detonation rattled across the faceted sky. Suddenly, on fast-ropes, crack doctors rappelled down from a very great height, tiny white and pink dots that grew at a phenomenal speed chasing hissing, uncoiling ropes. Guns bristled. Bullets slapped across the padded landscape with thumps as Combat-K dropped to their knees, guns training on these fast-falling deviated doctors and nurses, all wearing backless war-gowns and showing plump and pimpled arses in fast descent -
Guns roared. Keenan's MPK howled, Franco's quad-barrel Kekras smashed in his brutal fists, and Pippa stood, D5 shotgun resting on her hip as her cold grey eyes surveyed the attackers, and discharged shells into their midst. It started raining bodies, that thudded softly on the ground.
"The sky's been breached!" screeched Lunatrick. Weaponless, he stood, jaws agape, watching as Betezh, Snake, Fizzy, Shazza and Olga rotated like a well-oiled machine, guns roaring to pluck attackers from the sky. Bullets snapped and whined. Cordite formed clouds. Several crack abseiling doctors hit the ground and charged, hypodermic machine-guns pumping. Olga was hit in the shoulder, and pitched back with a roar as her own shotgun blew the doctor's head clean off. Another grew back, and Olga steadied herself, blood pouring from her wound, and she shot the second head off. This time, the double-headed GP hit the ground and was still, grey blood leaking from a steaming neck wound.
Snake was cool in the midst of the fire-fight, firing controlled three-round bursts and picking attackers neatly from their uncoiling fast-ropes. Bullets and needles whined around him, but he did not flinch, did not hide. His single eye was devastating at picking out targets.
As the last of the attackers rappelled, ropes hissing, Combat K's guns thundered through the sky and so one fat nurse landed, feet sinking up to her ankles in the cotton landscape. She was huge, with a bush of peroxide-blonde curls like an overgrown bush, and bright cherry-red lipstick that had gone nuclear. With screams and wobbling jowls she charged the group, and she carried short fat guns which discharged cubes of steel. Combat K's guns turned on this charging, suicidal, peroxide bouncing nurse, and bullets cannoned into her mass but for long moments she seemed to absorb everything thrown at her, and with body smoking from many puncture holes, and with her tight white PVC nurse uniform squeaking in punctured agony, she fell towards the floor face down as the last of her guns discharged -
Cubic bullets whumped across the clearing, and several hit Shazza in the face. In an instant her head was disintegrated by the small steel cubes, pounded in a flurry of metal to nothing, and Shazza stood for a shocked moment of incomprehension, her own gun pointing at the floor. Then her knees bent and she folded slowly to the ground.
"No!" screamed Fizzy, running to her lover's side and dropping, weeping, throwing her arms across Shazza's perfectly unmarked body. Only the head was missing, no face, just a ring of battered, bludgeoned bone. "No!"
Pippa ran to Fizzy and knelt by the woman. She glanced back at Keenan, who gave a nod then returned to scanning the skies with the hot barrel of his machine gun.
"We've got to get moving," said Pippa, placing a gentle hand on Fizzy's shoulder. "More could come."
"I'm not going anywhere," snarled Fizzy through tears and snot. "She's dead, Pippa, she's dead!"
Pippa said nothing for a moment. Keenan made a quick military hand gesture, and the group started moving away towards the Upsamid and a tiny entrance near its base.
"Come with us," said Pippa.
"No," wept Fizzy, digging her hands into her lover's clothing. "I'm staying. Staying here with Shazza."
"She wouldn't want this."
"I don't care!" Fizzy's eyes were wild. "You go. I'll protect the entrance. Buy you some time." She showed her teeth, which were stained with her own blood. She had bit her tongue, savaged herself in agony at her loss. "I'm going to kill some fucking nurses!"
Pippa nodded and looked to the skies even as more invaders started to fall. Fresh guns rattled and Pippa turned, sprinted towards the Upsamid's entrance where Franco was moaning about having to climb into tight little slippery holes.
"If you don't get in fast," snarled Keenan, "I'll shoot a tight little slippery hole in your bastard skull."
"All I'm saying, is..." muttered Franco, as he disappeared into the black square.
"Come on!" shouted Keenan, and Pippa ran past him, diving through the entrance. Keenan, left alone in this weird place, gave a long last glance at Fizzy, standing over the body of her dead lover. He watched, as she lifted her gun and with e
xpert, single shots began to murder the fast-dropping attackers... bodies began to fall, and Keenan's expert eye picked out a perfection of headshots. Suddenly, fire roared out from some kind of flamethrower and engulfed Fizzy, and the body of Shazza. From within the flames, still Fizzy calmly picked off doctors and nurses, and the odd twisted, screaming, deviant patient...
Keenan leapt through the hole, and landed on a sandy floor. Lunatrick did something to the wall, and huge crescent-shaped plates of stone slid into place. Outside, bullets pinged like the music of chiming crystal.
"We are safe. For a few moments."
Keenan nodded, and released a long breath. The sudden deaths of Shazza and Fizzy had shocked him, and he could feel the mood of the group change. A sense of mortality fell like a wide black shroud, covering their heads and shoulders in death fallout, entering their mouths and noses and eyes and filling them with an icy-cold sense of despondency.
"They're both dead," he said, quietly.
"Let's move out," said Snake, starting across the sand.
"Have you no fucking compassion?" snarled Pippa, her gun training on Snake. He stopped at this threat, his single eye focused on the weapon without emotion. He gave a shake of his head, and a narrow smile.
"Better them than me," he said.
"You bastard." Pippa's hand was shaking.
"Do it," said Snake. "You think I give a fuck? Don't you understand? We're moving further and further into Sick World, going deeper into the core. There's no escape from this place, Pippa. Shazza and Fizzy, they were lucky I think, they bought it first. I just hope my time comes as... quick." He smiled then, and his eyes moved to Keenan, who reached out and lowered Pippa's gun.
She looked at him questioningly, and suddenly read in his eyes the truth. There was no escape from this place. They were indeed going down to confront VOLOS, to save the millions of twisted deviated medical staff and patients of Sick World... but, in Keenan's mind, this was a one way journey; a suicide mission. There was no return.
"Hell," she breathed.