by Andy Remic
Akeez nodded, as if acknowledging Keenan’s presence at some private dignitaries’ function. Then he lifted his dark glittering eyes to a place above Emerald.
Keenan followed his gaze.
Black air was swirling, shimmering, black on black, on black, in different layers of darkness. A roar rushed up from deep below the bridge and blasted into the sky, coalescing and swirling, and glittering with pinpricks of white.
“Leviathan!” screamed Emerald, as spears of black lightning connected her to the resurrection of the Dark God... Leviathan the Eater: the Devourer of Worlds.
Keenan saw it, and it was beyond description. It was terrible— a creature, an entity that coalesced and swirled and was organic and fluid and took a form he would never be able to visualise nor comprehend. Leviathan grew. Then, he reached down with a long narrow limb of slick black metal and plucked Emerald from the bridge, lifting her high into the vault of the underground sky. Slowly, it tore her into pieces, plucking at the shreds with a hundred limbs of oiled black claws and absorbed them into the swirling tornado that was the Resurrection.
Keenan dropped to his knees, coughed blood onto the bridge, and then covered his face with his hands.
Pippa, too, staggered, released, falling to one knee. She stared up, in horror, in fear, in a base antediluvian terror at thisGod she could barely comprehend. She could feel him, it, inside her, in her head in her mind in her cunt in her heart in her soul. It was terrifying and uncompromising, and lacking in emotion or morals, or empathy, and she knew, she knewit, and it knewher. It was at one with her. It flowed through her veins and spine, and infused her with a part of every atom. She could taste its memories like cold hydrogen corpses on an eternal beach. Leviathan had existed from the dawn of a brittle Galaxy, and its one controlling, absorbing, consuming energy was...
Hate.
Pippa let out a primal scream. Madness took her mind in its fist, and squeezed.
Keenan snarled at Leviathan, saliva spooling from battered lips. He screamed out in defiance at the entity, which spun and gleamed lazily in the sky above him like oiled gold. There was no face, only an idea that it was watching him, but he knew that it was: with contempt, with amusement, with the patience of the infinite. Keenan did not speak, could not speak, but his rage and raw confrontation, and his contempt for that life-taking devourer filled him, and poured out like a river of anguish.
Leviathan coiled about and within itself.
There was a boom, subtle and terrifying.
And the very core of Teller’s World shuddered.
Chapter 20
Leviathan's Song
Keenan seemed to fade from sight. Cam hung, buzzing softly, watching the confusion in the sentinel machines which, having lost their target, milled around. Cam glided lower, surveying the creatures. They looked battered and worn, and not in the best of condition. And he realised they were old, ancient, from another time, another era, from a world when primitive minds had designed machines to be... what? Fearsome? Cam chuckled, revelling in his superiority and with a song in his atomic heart.
Still, the little PopBot was confused. And now, waiting for—hopefully—the return of Keenan and Pippa, he set several spare cores working on the problem of the Shift, which, apparently, he could not make. He journeyed back, over the heads of the whining panting metal sentinels, cruising at speed all the way to the lair of the spidery things, then back, back to the river. Cam paused, staring at the fast-flowing oil. Operations came and went in his tiny casing. He considered the river. What was its purpose? What was oil usually used for? Cooling, but cooling what? Machinery? Machinery used for what?
Cam followed the river, calculating an estimated volume, and increasing his speed until he was a blur. Suddenly the river ended, was funnelled downwards. A huge waterfall was collected at the bottom of a kilometre-deep valley by slick cones leading to thick pipes. Cam considered this. With an internal digital sigh, he dropped like a rock, and was sucked into one of the pipes. Submerged in oil, he checked his seals, and then flowed with the vertical current. The pipes twisted and turned, eventually leading to... a machine: a large machine.
Cam emerged in a shower of oil, punched his way through a sieve of steel mesh, and observed the cooling system stretching off to the horizon. He zoomed, he estimated. The cooling system was six thousand kilometres long by a thousand kilometres wide. More processor cores kicked in. Cam worked, buzzing and vibrating softly, oil dripping from his casing as he calculated and instigated algorithms. He followed the machine, followed the curve that followed the curvature of the planet’s hub. And, halting, Cam saw what he needed to see: the machines that serviced the core of the planet, a core that was not molten rock, but... something else.
Impossible, thought the little PopBot.
It cannot be done.
Sensors detected Cam’s sentient presence. They emerged from recessed drawers with tiny zips, and spun after him, razors spinning and tiny red eyes glittering but Cam accelerated at an awesome rate, back through the mesh, up the oil collectors, and in a burst and flurry of exploding oil, out over the river, the edges of his case glowing.
Cam paused. If he’d had lungs, he would have panted. Instead, digitally controlled coolers extracted and hissed super-iced air over his case until frost sparkled. Suddenly, the tiny red-eyed bots zipped out through the river and surrounded him. They flickered this way and that, unable to keep still, circling him, darting and moving, weighing up his defences... not realising the systems he carried within his miniature hull.
Cam sighed.
Stupidity!
The ten tiny bots attacked, red eyes glowing, and Cam spun as he fired charges, watching them explode with a crackle of rapid succession, like a volley of fireworks. Ten bots fell into the river and bobbed away, dead.
Cam rotated again, his conclusion to the problem of the Shift emerging. Ahh, he thought, that’s what it is, and that’show you do it. He understood Teller’s World, understood it’s great secret, and understood the sudden threat facing Combat K. A threat of which Keenan and Pippa had no idea.
“Oh no,” he said.
Something exploded on the horizon. It was gunfire. Cam focused. Injectors buzzed, and he accelerated and spun like a bullet across the metal landscape of the Mekkra Woods. He came to a... battle. He could not believe his sensors. It was Betezh... and... Franco?
“I thought you were dead!”
A creature leapt through the air, razor talons nearly disembowelling the small ginger pugilist. He twisted, Kekra roaring in his fist, disintegrating the sentinel, which crumbled around him, huge shards aflame, panels whirring to the ground, buckled and destroyed. He scowled up at Cam.
“No, I’m here, and I could do with some damn bloody help!” More creatures advanced, and Betezh swung at them with the battered ice axe. They circled the two men warily.
This is it, thought Franco. The end!
He scowled in fury. To die in such a way! The shame!
The several hundred strong phalanx of metal sentinels charged, screaming, and the two men, eyes bulging, stood their ground, and began to shoot and swing and growl and curse. Suddenly, above the clearing, a high-pitched noise rattled out a series of wailing and warbling tones, a high-bandwidth transmission of... data.
The sentinels faltered. They stumbled, falling to knees and wings and claws. Franco and Betezh stared at one another in amazement; then clutched one another in a vicious bear-hug.
“That help?”
“What did you do?”
“Random digital noise underplayed with a modest EMP transmission, on an audio frequency. These machines talk to each other via sound. Primitive, I know. I’ve just fed their input systems with shit. That should keep them quiet for a little while.”
Franco and Betezh were dancing a jig.
“Whoo-hoo!” said Franco. “Still alive!”
“Franco! Keenan and Pippa are in grave danger. I’ve worked out what this planet is. How it’s powered. What the hell’s going
on. Emerald seeks to resurrect one of the oldest ancient Gods, Leviathan. She was a slave, and he was her master, a million years ago. Leviathan wreaks destruction, dealing death and oblivion to all life. When strong, he will rampage through the Quad-Gal, and those he does not enslave he will consume. He is a parasite, and he was imprisoned.”
“How?” said Franco, still panting from the fight and the bear-hug.
“At the centre of Teller’s World, which, ironically, is not a world, but a prison, a machine, and, at its basic level, a cage.”
“And you worked out how this prison is powered?”
“Yes.” Cam’s case glittered red. His tone was deadly serious, frightened, even. “The core of this machine—in its entirety—is a chained and harnessed Black Hole.”
Keenan forced himself, with brute willpower, to his feet. He staggered across the trembling bridge. Pippa had dropped her sword, and he picked up the blade, brandishing it in defiance at Leviathan. A sound emerged, and Keenan realised that the swirling oil entity was amused.
“Fuck you,” he screamed, and hurled the sword into the swirling darkness.
A limb crashed out from the insanity, plucked Keenan from the bridge and lifted him hundreds of feet into the air. He flew, dizzyingly, the whole of The Factory spreading beneath him. Nausea flooded him. He vomited, and felt death touch him with a subtle caress. His flight halted, abruptly, and he stared down with sour lips at the metal limb that held him, at the talons that cradled him. They were narrow, an approximation of fingers, created by something that had never seen fingers.
Keenan snarled and screamed at the creature without words.
And again, Teller’s World trembled.
A scream rent the air. Keenan could smell hot metal, burning oil, the stench of death, rotting flesh, flowers, lavender. And he wept. He wept for the world, and he wept for his wife and for his murdered children. He could see them, their sweet smiling faces, their hands stretching out towards him, Ally brushing crumbs from his shirt, Rachel patting him on the shoulder with child-serious sincerity, Ally climbing nightmare-eyed into his bed and snuggling up close for protection, protection he could always offer them. Oh yeah, protect who? protect what? You offer shit. You can offer no fucking protection. And he hated himself and hated the world. Far below he watched Pippa stir, climb to her feet and glance up with a haunted face filled with empty desolation...
“What is it?”
Franco hefted the huge weapon, and swept it around inside the LightningAPSF—Advanced Prototype Surface Fighter. Cam buzzed a warning, dodged the trajectory, and retreated.
“We have to hurry,” snapped the PopBot.
“Calm down, calm down!”
“And stop pointing that damned thing at me!”
“Well, what is it?”
“An RPN.”
“You mean an RPG, surely?”
“No. It’s a Rocket Propelled Nuke.”
“Ahh. I didn’t realise they built those anymore.” Franco admired the sleek matt green shaft, and peered like a curious kid into the face—the tip—of the nuclear warhead. “Is it dangerous?”
“Of course it’s fucking dangerous,” spluttered Cam, “and only a madman would build one! Only a bigger madman would use one! A nuke, fired from your shoulder? The daft bastards kept nuking themselves! Insanity! Now put it down, get yourself a sub-machine gun or something, and follow me this instant!”
After an electronic hijacking of the Shift, Cam had led the two dazed men through The Factory, pushing them on faster and faster, urgently, to halt Keenan and Pippa’s impending demise. But, as Franco seriously pointed out, he and Betezh were reduced in terms of weaponry. They were hardly in a position to defend themselves, never mind fight and rescue their comrades. If indeed, their comrades needed—or wanted—rescuing.
Cam had reluctantly steered them to the graveyard of ships, and Franco’s eyes had lit up. Realisation dawned. “An escape route!” he blurted, then ran forward, waving his arms.
“You need to find Pippa first,” pointed out Cam.
“Good point. You said there were guns?”
“The huge rectangular craft is an Infantry Gun Carrier.”
Franco gave him a thumbs up. “Good lad.”
“Just be quick. And Franco?”
“Yes Cam?”
“Let’s be sensible about this.”
“Aye, Cam.”
Cam watched Franco stagger from the IGC, bent almost double under the weight of guns, bombs and RPNs. He sighed, a silent digital sigh, as the world around them began to tremble. The Factory shuddered, like an organic beast dying... or coming alive.
“Cam!” shrieked Franco. “What’s happening?”
“We have to go. Now!” snarled the PopBot.
Franco dropped several huge bags of guns, and, followed closely by Betezh—more sensibly armed—sprinted after the bobbing PopBot. Huge booms echoed from the sky, and from beneath the ground. The world was screaming, trembling, shuddering. They pounded on, and in the blink of an eye careered from a street to see the world open before them, then on to a wide bridge above a bottomless chasm. Franco skidded to a halt, eyes sweeping the scene, taking it in with an educated eye, used to calculating conflict and the engagement of war in an instant.
Franco stared at the huge swirling mass of Leviathan.
Hmm, he thought. That has to be bad.
Then he stared with a frown at the limb holding Keenan several hundred feet above the bridge. Franco ran forward, halting beside Pippa, who was silent, her face a nightmare, her eyes piss-holes leading straight down to Hell. Franco pointed up at Leviathan.
“Oi! You! Dickhead! Put my friend down!”
The limb carrying Keenan swept towards the bridge, and Keenan’s rag-doll body sailed past Franco’s face with a howl, making him leap back, squawking. High above, a thousand other metal limbed tentacles unfolded from the hub of the swirling chaos that was Leviathan.
Franco scowled. “You cheeky son of a bitch.” He shouldered an RPN, smashed the safety cover with the butt of his Kekra, aimed it, and fired.
There was a whoosh.
Franco staggered back ten steps, then sat down heavily with a thump.
The atomic warhead left a trail of fire through blackness, struck Leviathan, and was absorbed like a stone in a lake of black oil. There was a moment of hiatus, then a deep glow, the ignition of a sun, which blossomed and then went rigid, gloss black, and cold.
A deep groan filled the world. The bridge on which they stood shook. Above, huge rocks fell from the sky, house-sized and jagged, tumbling down past the bridge and disappearing into the chasm.
Franco climbed to his feet.
Betezh nudged him. “I don’t think he liked that!”
“Fuck ’im!”
A roar filled the cavern, so deafening it was beyond description. It came from everywhere at once: a blast so devastating it swept those still standing from their feet, and sent Cam scurrying wildly and erratically through the air on random eddies of tornado.
Leviathan’s limbs thrashed.
Keenan was swept around, high into the sky, then low skimming the bridge. As the limb came past Pippa, who had regained her sword, she leapt and made a neat vicious diagonal cut—
Talons rattled on steel, like knuckle-dice.
Keenan rolled along the bridge, winded, body and limbs slapping the metal.
The roar echoed again, and the sky rained rocks, several of which crashed against the bridge, making the structure groan. Franco shouldered a second RPN and grinned over at Keenan.
“This is the life, eh lad? Never a boring moment!”
“Fire into the chasm!” screamed Cam. “You cannot kill Leviathan! Fire into the chasm!”
Franco ran to the bridge’s rail, leapt, balanced himself, sighted, and standing precariously on the swirling iron above a dark infinity, he unleashed the warhead into the black maw below. A trail of fire cut the tenebrosity in two. The rocket howled, fading from hearing, and the nuke was gone.
Franco’s head snapped round. He scowled at Cam. “Nothing happened! You dumb-ass Bot! Anyway, what the hell was I firing at?”
“The chains,” whispered Cam.
“Chains?”
“Holding the Black Hole.”
Franco’s mouth flapped. “What do we do now?”
Keenan sprinted past him. He growled, “We run, idiot.”
Keenan slid, stopped, picked up the limp body of Kotinevitch, and flinging her over his shoulder with a wince of agony, sprinted again along the bridge. Behind them, Leviathan roared as somewhere deep deep deep below there was an almost silent explosion. Keenan, Pippa, Franco and Betezh skidded to a halt at the edge of The Factory’s broad street. Leviathan swirled and glowed. A terrible silence descended over the scene; calmness, a serenity.
A shaft of black fire a kilometre wide shot from the chasm below, engulfing Leviathan in an instant and blasting a hole through the rock roof above the bridge. The bridge was gone instantly, vaporised. The black fire twisted their eyes around in their heads.
“Run!” screamed Cam, and slammed off in crazy zig-zagging acceleration.
They pounded after the PopBot. Around them, The Factory started to crumble and collapse. Huge towering buildings disintegrated. Mammoth towers collapsed in on themselves. The world descended into a chaos of noise and rumbling destruction. The air filled with waves of smoke and debris, dust and shards of metal.
Combat K ran for their lives.
Ahead, Cam spun, scanners screaming, analysing the gathered ships in the collection. There, he thought. One of the most powerful and brutal ships ever built, known commonly as No Rest; it’s full moniker was No Rest For The Wicked. It was not, reputedly, the safest or most reliable ship ever built, but, by God, it was the fastest.
Cam sped on, communicating with ship Systems and warming engines, bringing subsidiary systems online. The No Rest glowed with bright lights, which drew Combat K like flies to a lantern. Panting, groaning, they sprinted towards the ship, glowing welcomingly through the dust and smoke. They hammered up the corrugated alloy ramp, and Pippa slammed into the pilot’s seat, lifting the ship from the ground on a punch of power, before the ramps had even closed. They soared high above the disintegrating Factory, only to discover it wasn’t The Factory that was crumbling— but the world.