by Ian Whates
“Where’s Pippa?”
Franco stood upright, stared out, watched the mercury eel circle their Rubber Duck boat and suddenly ensnare it, its whole body flipping from the river to wrap around the boat again and again in huge circles, and with a sudden pulse and tug, crush the boat into a hissing, buckling, pulped oblivion.
Slowly, Franco pulled free his Bausch & Harris. “She’s there. See. Pippa, Hey!” He waved. She seemed disorientated in the gloom, in the drizzle of light rain, but focused on his words and struck out towards him. However, the eel also heard Franco and turned, writhing in foam as Franco snarled a curse and aimed down the rifle’s sight.
“You’ll draw attention to us!” snapped Keenan, hoisting his own guns and casting about for enemy.
“I can’t let her die,” said Franco.
He fired, a muted thump and the bullet disappeared in the eel’s mass. Pippa powered on, but the eel moved fast for something so big. It gained swiftly. If it caught her, it would crush her without doubt. Franco breathed deep, and fired off another three shots in quick succession. The thump of bullets echoed off, flesh slaps, muted by the jungle.
“It’s going to kill her,” said Keenan.
“Not on my watch,” snapped Franco, and he began pumping shot after shot after shot into the silver eel, unaware if his bullets had effect, unaware if this thing was something they could kill. What was it? AI? A simpConstruct robot? Organic? Or a meld of all three?
“Come on!” urged Keenan.
Franco kept on firing, and the eel suddenly slowed, its sidewinder motion becoming erratic. Pippa reached the shore, but the eel’s tail lunged from blood waters and wrapped around her chest. It dragged her back, and both Keenan and Franco leaped forward, guns thundering and howling into the thick silver body which twitched and pulsed. Pippa screamed, hands straining against the metallic surface. Then her fingers slipped inside, as if entering jelly, and came out, shocked, trailing umbilicals of silver eel strand …
Franco dropped to his knees on the rocks, in the mud, his eyes locked to Pippa’s and reading the pain and suffering there. He pulled a BABE grenade from his belt, gave her a wide grin, pulled the pin and plunged his fist inside the eel’s apparently semi-solid body. He pulled free his arm, rocked back on heels, and fell to his arse. He watched as there came a muffled crack. Ripples shuddered along the length of the eel, and it twitched, every molecule vibrating out of synchronization with every other. Then the creature was still.
Franco and Keenan dragged Pippa from the strange creature’s embrace, Pippa coughing, holding her chest. Without her WarSuit she’d be a mashed pulp, a skin bag of crumbled bones. Even now, the armour was buzzing warnings; it was seriously damaged, and would fail if it took another serious impact.
“I’d say they know we’re here,” said Franco.
“Let’s move out. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we go home.”
“I’m beginning to hate this planet,” said Franco, pulling his sulky lip.
Pippa coughed, and stood. She took several deep breaths. She looked annoyed. More than annoyed. She looked ready to kill. “Let’s go assassinate this bastard,” she said, and hoisted her shotgun with a scowl.
They moved like ghosts through the jungle. Up close, the trees were metallic, coated in a sheen of oil. They were not living, not organic, but simple machines designed to imitate life. A machine jungle. An army of sentry steel.
“What kind of freak creates such a place?” said Franco, frowning. It was the waste and pointlessness, more than anything, that offended him.
“Just keep your eye on the PAD.”
For the last two klicks they’d evaded nine junk patrols, keeping low and quiet, going to ground at the first hint of enemy activity. But the fact still nagged Combat K – if the enemy knew they were there, on the planet, alertness would be increased. And the enemy may also now have discovered the SLAM cruiser. The last thing a soldier needed after a bad gig was a compromised ride home.
Franco, bringing up the rear, caught Keenan’s signal and dropped instantly, silent. He carried the Bausch & Harris, now, in his big pugilist’s paws. He was twitchy, on edge. A man on a high wire. A hairline trigger.
Franco dropped to his belly against the floppy, metallic leaves and commando-crawled forward. They were on a cliff top overlooking a bowl valley devoid of jungle, although with so many thick creepers it could happily be described as a bowel valley. To the left, the Blood River eased sluggish and wide. Boats were moored there, low alloy vessels with big guns. Several ornately carved stone buildings squatted at the centre of the cleared jungle, lights shining in windows. And yet the whole place was deserted, especially as this was supposed to be the Nano-Bomb Factory. It felt wrong, and much too small in scale. If this was a Nano-Bomb Factory, would General Zenab really surround himself with a mere handful of junk protectors? If this man really was as richly rewarded, highly prized and threatening to QGM as they claimed, wouldn’t the security be far more aggressive?
“This stinks,” said Pippa.
“Like a ten-week dead pig,” added Franco.
“Let me think,” said Keenan. “Is the PAD still dead?”
“Like a ten-week dead skunk,” said Franco.
Keenan held up one fist. “Stop! I need to think. Pippa, is this the target?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s so wrong.”
“I know that, Kee. This ain’t no Nano-Bomb Factory.”
Keenan bellied down, chin on his hands, and watched the modest activity which surrounded the small stone buildings. The carvings were ancient. Alien archaeology. He shuddered. It always filled him with a desolation, as if humans had only been kicking around the Quad-Gal for a few minutes – which in reality, they had. Aliens, sentient life-species as a matrix, had been around a billion times longer. This simple infancy made humanity feel quite insecure; something they made up for with aggression and a savage empire.
“Maybe,” said Keenan, “this bastard is so tough he doesn’t need protection. We’re looking at this wrong. Maybe Zenab is an ancient alien creature, more powerful than any of us dreamed. After all, we’re assuming he’s human, because QGM assumed he was human. That was never confirmed.”
“Shit intel, again,” snapped Pippa. “The story of our lives.”
“We need to make the best of it,” said Keenan. “This is the gig. I’ll head in alone; you two cover me, especially Franco with that lethal bastard rifle. OK?”
“I don’t like it,” said Pippa.
“I didn’t ask whether you liked it.”
Pippa took his arm, stared into his eyes. And he could read it there – the love, the need, the want, the lust, sexual desire but more than that, a deep and meaningful connection.
“Don’t go, Kee,” she said.
“We need to get this done.”
And he was gone, easing down the slope, fingers digging in rock, eyes and senses alert for enemy activity. But the camp, or base, the supposed Nano-Bomb Factory was pretty much deserted. It was a ghost ship.
“He’ll be OK,” said Franco, grinning, and patting Pippa on the shoulder. “Let’s keep him covered.”
“If he’s not back in ten minutes, I’m going in.” “That isn’t what he said.”
“It’s what I said,” she hissed, eyes an insane glare.
“OK, OK, don’t take it out on poor old Franco.”
“Just play with your gun.”
Mumbling, Franco checked over his rifle, and tried not to look concerned.
* * *
Keenan touched down on moist soil. His eyes raked the jungle perimeter. The stone buildings appeared inviting, warm, homely, and for the first time in a long, long time he found himself thinking of home. His old home. Before Galhari, and before the … murders. The word sat foul on his tongue, in his brain, like a diseased implant, a toxic augmentation. His wife, Freya, and their children, Rachel and Ally, had been killed. At first, it had been pinned on Pippa and they had hated one another, tried to kill
one another – after all, hadn’t Pippa been his lover? Hadn’t he cast her aside? Hadn’t she had motive to murder his family? But as days fell into weeks fell into months, it had blurred and become apparent that something far more sinister was at work, so complex even Pippa herself wasn’t sure if she’d committed the evil deed. One thing was for sure, however. Keenan’s family were dead, slaughtered, and sometimes, occasionally, more often now as months flowed like mercury, he longed to join them.
He knew they were waiting.
Keenan descended the final section of rocky slope, boots digging in, searching for targets. But the area was deserted and this worried him more than any waiting army. Keeping a low profile, he crossed the bare ground to the largest of the stone buildings, eyes taking in ancient carvings which passed through several planes of reality. They were deeply alien, twisted, some shifting from sight to scent to aural expression, and dazzling Keenan with a form of sensual confusion. “Alien shit,” he muttered. “Bring back Picasso.”
He stopped, back to the wall, gun against his cheek, and glanced up to where Franco and Pippa were camouflaged, invisible, their guns trained, protecting him like hot metal guardians. A robot dad. He peered into the building, which was cool and inviting, a staggered tile floor, every inch of the walls lined with rich tapestries hanging ceiling to floor.
Keenan stepped in, sounds muffled by the vibrant needlework. He moved through rooms, realizing the building was much larger than anticipated … but there was no bomb-making equipment on show, no advanced circuitry for the design and production of nano technology. It was primitive. Bare. A let-down. A cerebral retard.
He emerged on the edges of a modest room, circular, walls hung with green tapestries which shifted in a breeze. Sliding behind these convenient screens, he observed three figures, three huge junks with rippling muscles and holstered machine guns. Before them stood a child, a girl, six years old with fine blonde hair and blue eyes in a pretty, oval face. She wore a simple white robe, and clutched a low-profile wooden box in both hands. She was talking, words gentle, like whispers on the wind.
Keenan’s gaze shifted back to the three junks and he wondered which one was General Zenab …
“Hello, Mr Keenan,” said the child, turning, head tilting, just as Keenan was deciding which junk to kill first. He froze, aware he’d made no sound, had not compromised his position in the slightest. He relaxed. So. They knew he was coming and, more than that, they knew who he was.
Combat K. QGM. Shit.
He stepped from his tapestry-concealed hiding place, grinning wryly. He’d never made a good assassin. Hell, he thought, I’m barely a soldier these days, barely human. He expected a battle, but the junks failed to present arms. They stood, facing away like automatons, apparently oblivious to his existence. Drones in the hive.
“Come forward,” said the little girl.
Keenan moved, D5 shotgun in his gloved hands, ready at a twitch to blow any living creature in half. He was watching the junks, eyes narrowed, senses screaming at him with his tainted alien blood, but he could feel no others. The five of them were alone …
“Which of you is Zenab?”
“Ahh,” said the little girl, eyes sparkling, hands clutching the wooden box so tightly her knuckles were white. “You have come for murder. Assassination. Death. We will be sorry to disappoint you; sorry to send you away.”
“So he’s not here?”
“Assumptions by Quad-Gal Military are so refreshing.” Something about the way she spoke the name made Keenan freeze, boots welded to floor tiles, eyes fixed on her and realizing, an instant too late, that she was more than the sum of her parts, and infinitely more dangerous than her simple image led him to believe …
He gazed into that face, and his heart melted, and he knew, knew in a blinding white hot intensity that this girl, this child, this pale innocent was the general he sought to exterminate. And he knew, knew deep in his soul that he could not kill this person.
That’s what it wants you think … whispered the dark side of his soul.
No! She’s a child, a puppet of the junks; I should kill them, her guards, the scourge which has imprisoned her! I should take her away from this place, this evil, take her away to a better life … a life with kindness, and family, a place filled with warmth and love.
She will kill you, Keenan. She will possess you! She is not human … she will usurp your flesh.
But that was impossible, he realized. She could not usurp him, or possess him, because he barely lived there himself.
“You are General Zenab.” It was not a question.
“So very perceptive.” She smiled, with small white teeth. And he knew; understood that her arrogance precluded an awesome power. She was no human, because Keenan was no longer human, and the alien blood from an earlier encounter had tainted his own blood, own soul, had somehow elevated him, somehow desecrated him, dropped him into another plane of existence.
“I have been sent to … to kill you.” Keenan’s voice was quiet. “But I will give you a choice. I will take you away from this place. Give you another life, a better life.” He no longer saw Zenab. He saw Rachel and Ally. Their bloody corpses. It ate him like acid.
“Like you would have done for your girls?”
“Yes.” Keenan’s voice was strangled, neither human nor animal; an imitation of the organic. And a tidal wave of guilt and shame washed over him, flooded him inside out and he felt his knees go weak, his anger flee, any straggled remnants of hatred were torn and all he wanted, more than anything in this world, in this life, was to save this child … as he had failed to save his own.
He knelt, and placed his gun on the floor with a clack. “Come with me,” he said.
She laughed. “I cannot. You do not understand.”
“I understand you are prisoner, forced to use your talents for the junks, to aid their empire, to extend their evil.”
She smiled, pretty face wrinkling, and Keenan’s heart melted, his soul burned, and he only realized Pippa and Franco were behind him when he saw the barrel of Franco’s Bausch & Harris rifle ease past his shoulder …
“Don’t move, buddy,” said Franco.
“What are you doing?” snapped Keenan.
“She’s a witch, a changer, a junk-spawn. She’s infested, mate. She’s hooked into your brain, and into your spine. She’s using you Kee. She’ll kill you. Don’t trust her.” He grinned, but the smile looked wrong on his face. Twisted. Too much bone. Too much skull.
Keenan frowned, the whole world tumbling down. “Bullshit!” he snapped. “She’s a prisoner. We have to rescue her … to free her! What’s wrong with you, Franco? Can’t you see?”
“He’s right.” Pippa’s hand touched Keenan’s shoulder, then her gun caressed the side of his head. “Sorry, Kee. It’s time to die.”
A feeling swept over Keenan, nausea, a violent bout of sickness worse than anything ever felt. Like a puzzle solved, everything clicked into place. The pulse of alien blood through his veins, the beat of his heart, all melded to show him the truth … he ducked as Pippa pulled the trigger, and her bullet whined, entered Franco’s skull with a slap, blasting his head into ribbons of flesh and curled bone. Brain mushroomed out then paused, like elastic caught at the point of furthest trajectory, and ravelled swiftly back in as the head reformed itself disjointedly and for a moment, the briefest of instants, Keenan saw the face disintegrate into a cloud of particles … and rearrange as solid flesh.
Keenan whirled fast and the world kicked into guns and bullets, into action and reaction as Franco and Pippa leaped from a doorway with guns thundering, bullets scything into the fake forms of Franco and Pippa, into their simulacrums, created things, imitations of life.
Pippa killed herself with a shotgun blast to the head, and watched her own body curl in on itself, into a shower of silver powder that trickled down between cracks in the floor tiles. Franco had a short vicious fight with his own head-holed ganger, and shot himself in the stomach, then the throat,
and finally the face. He watched himself die and, in dying, so the real Franco was born again.
“Shit,” he panted, face bathed in sweat. “They nearly had you, Keenan!”
The three junks attacked, as Combat K attacked. Keenan was kicked out of his shock, grabbing the D5 shotgun and leaping forward, blasting a junk guard in the face with a burst of shells and removing his head. There was a whirlwind of violence which left Combat K crouched on the tiles, surrounded by blood and junk gore, limbs, chunks of flesh, as a cool wind blew through the chamber and they realized the little girl had gone.
“The General’s fled,” said Pippa. “What the fuck’s going on?”
“Nano-technology,” snarled Keenan. “And the box she carries. It’s the Nano-Bomb Factory. I don’t know why we thought it’d be an installation; it’s something complex, something small, something incredibly advanced. We have to get it. It’s too dangerous to let go.”
They ran through corridors, through chambers, all writhing with ancient alien stonecraft. They emerged, saw the little girl sprinting towards the river and a sleek alloy craft.
“She’s going to escape,” snapped Pippa. “Shoot her! QGM rely on it! Millions rely on it.”
Franco lifted his rifle, and caught Keenan’s eye. Keenan looked as if he’d been hit by a hammer. How could he shoot his own daughter in the back? How could he murder his little girl?
Franco, also, was flooded with doubt. He lowered the gun, long barrel pointing at the churned mud floor. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t shoot a child in the back. It’s just not right!”
“Give me the gun,” snarled Pippa, dragging the rifle from Franco’s scarred hands. She aimed, and with a crack took the back of the girl’s head off. General Zenab toppled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, and did not move.
“I’m just mangled,” said Franco. “What the hell actually happened? Why did I just kill myself?”
They moved to the girl, a destroyed form. Even as they watched, a tiny cloud, millions of silver particles, formed into a fist, then dissipated swiftly on the wind.