by Andy Remic
She took a final look at the tanks; huge squat metal machines, painted roughly, their torsos dented and showing signs of abuse. They were silent, engines dead.
And the Nex ...
She could see five groups, all with their attention diverted by groups of Spiral_F, or Pigs. Another group were setting up some equipment at the edge of the trees. Natasha and Carter stepped away from the sanctuary.
They ran.
It took an eternity ...
Ten paces. Each step saw a splash of red erupt from Carter’s side as a flap of flesh opened with a jolt, blood marking his passage against the sand.
Twenty paces.
Natasha spotted the five emerging Nex at the edge of the orchard, spotted their positions and their glinting weapons. ‘Fu—’ she managed as they opened fire. Natasha screamed, her head ducking low, Carter suddenly an incredibly heavy and cumbersome weight chained around her neck and dragging her down down down into the black depths of death and oblivion - bullets kicked up dirt around her feet, some whizzed past and ricocheted off the stone of the house in tiny spurts of dust.
Natasha pushed on.
The Nex ceased their firing.
They charged, moving swiftly and silently over the ground towards the staggering couple. Natasha, teeth gritted, urged herself to greater efforts, almost dragging the semi-conscious Carter with her.
Seventy paces. Eighty paces...
Ninety—
She could pick out the copper eyes of the Nex—
And realised.
They look the same, she thought.
They all look the fucking same ...
She reached the Cherokee, wrenched open the door and pushed Carter into the cabin. The lead Nex leaped, boots slapping the bonnet of the Cherokee and sliding towards her. With a yelp, Natasha dived in and slammed the door - which jammed open, three inches from closing—
She saw the fingers, then the masked face appear. The door was pulled away from her blood-slippery grip—
Natasha’s boot slammed into the Nex’s face, three, four times - the Nex fell back and she pulled at the Cherokee’s door with all her might. It slammed shut with a heavy final click. She looked down in horror at the three severed fingers in the footwell.
It didn’t scream, she realised.
It didn’t make a fucking sound...
The other Nex arrived - leaping at the vehicle—
Natasha slammed down the central locking. All doors locked - a Nex started beating at the door, then hammered a fist through the side window, shattering its glass and scattering it over the inside of the cab. Natasha brought the stolen SMG around and held the trigger down hard; bullets spat out through the smashed window and into the Nex’s body and already she was turning the ignition. The huge 4.0-litre engine roared into life as her boot stomped down and a Nex was caught suddenly against the grille and bonnet, buckled, tossed beneath the vehicle and wrapped around the spinning prop-shaft... The SMG, still screaming, suddenly clicked on an empty mag and Natasha dropped the weapon on the seat next to the crumpled, wheezing body of Carter and dragged on the steering wheel. The Cherokee roared towards the orange trees with three Nex sprinting after it—
It sped beneath the fruit-laden branches, straight down the dirt track. Natasha laughed out loud as a fresh breeze came blowing through the smashed window and cooled the sweat of desperation on her face. ‘Carter?’ she screamed. ‘You OK, Carter? You still alive?’
There was a distant sound. A crump.
As if obeying some unconscious reflex, Carter reached over and dragged hard on the steering wheel. The Cherokee slewed from the trail; there was a painful metal scream, and the trail just behind them erupted in a shower of dirt. Stones and shrapnel pounded and howled - round the Cherokee, which rocked on the concussion of the blast.
Carter looked up, smiled weakly at Natasha, then closed his eyes as sunlight played through the windscreen and illuminated his face and he could think of nothing except—
Pain.
All-consuming pain.
“Get me to a doctor and I just might live,’ he wheezed.
‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ snapped Natasha.
Carter grinned - his blood-splashed face a caked mask of horror and destruction.
Natasha increased the speed - roaring in a burst of screaming engine noise out of the orange-tree orchards, bursting free of their heady fragrance and cool shade and into the reality of the sun-baked African landscape. The end of the canyon rushed towards them and there, ahead of them, stood a small group of Nex. The Cherokee, now touching a hundred m.p.h., hit the ridge and bullets thumped along its flanks and the wheels disengaged from the ground and it soared—
Natasha ducked.
All she could see was sky.
‘Fuuu-ck...’ she hissed as the Cherokee hurtled glinting through the air. A glance in the rear-view mirror showed nothing behind ...
The vehicle came down like a plane coming in to land—
The suspension compressed, bottoming out with terrifyingly loud bangs, and Natasha was smashed upwards, hands slipping from the wheel, head hammering the roof of the cab so hard that her teeth slammed together, leaving her mouth swilling with blood and shards of tooth ... The Cherokee kangarooed for a few moments, obeying the laws of physics as it slewed around in the scrub, tyres eating dirt and sand and bushes until Natasha gripped the wheel once more and dragged it onto course, foot stamping hard against the accelerator and dragging the roaring vehicle around in a broad arc, heading up towards the red rocky hills to the right of Gol’s devastated blasted routed Spiral_F Operations Centre—
‘What the fuck hit me?’ groaned Carter.
Natasha spat a mouthful of blood out of the window. She blinked rapidly, quelling the spinning sensation in her head. ‘Just stay down, my love,’ she managed. ‘You really don’t want to know.’
Natasha accelerated, tyres thumping over bushes and scrub.
She followed no road - she made her own.
Something clanged and thumped under the vehicle -but Natasha did not care. She fumbled free the ECube and it guided her; it didn’t matter that their position wasn’t secure - it was obvious to anybody who cared to look.
She pressed the accelerator to the floor and her hands shook madly on the heavily vibrating steering wheel and they headed upwards and finally joined a dirt track leading towards the rendezvous and, Natasha hoped, escape—
‘I hope this rendezvous exists,’ she muttered.
She checked her teeth in the rear-view mirror, cursing their chipped edges, vanity still a reflex despite her nearly fatal experience. As she moved the mirror back into position she saw them—
Three trucks.
Hammering along behind her—
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she hissed. ‘Will they never stop?’
She urged the Cherokee on; the pursuing trucks -whatever make they were - were incredibly powerful. They didn’t gain, but she could not lose them either. They sped along in the sunlight, huge red dust-trails in their wake, tyres and suspension thumping and rocks and trees and bushes flashing by to either side—
In a cloud of dust the Cherokee hammered up the incline and towards the location indicated by the blip on the ECube... towards the emergency rendezvous set up by Gol - who had mysteriously disappeared.
‘I hope you’re all right, father,’ Natasha thought soberly. ‘I hope you’re OK.’
Shanaz froze. A figure was crouched in the tunnel, an SMG levelled at her.
After the hectic bloody battle out front, Shanaz had been separated from her group; she had fled the bullets, down the alloy ramp and into the depths of Spiral_F deep under the ground...
That had been the plan. To meet; to regroup if the shit hit the fan.
And the shit had most definitely battered the fan to pieces.
Shanaz stared at the shadowed figure. It had to be a Nex; it had to be. She cursed the dim lighting down here in the depths ...
Slowly, Shanaz lifted her hands in the air.
She did not glance at it.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked softly, trying not to antagonise the armed intruder.
The masked face tilted; eyes scanned the room.
The figure stood from its crouch. A fluid blur.
There came a hiss of exhaled breath.
The SMG roared, and Shanaz was slammed backwards against a computer, blood splashing up the rock walls, the bullets cutting a line straight up her chest and slamming into her skull. Shards of skull bone spun free and she slumped slack across a chair, limp and dead, her brain and exposed organs glistening in the weak glow of the bulbs.
Suddenly, silence reigned.
The assassin’s head snapped left; the SMG moved to cover the opening of a tunnel.
Jahmal sprinted into view, large round face changing from a happy smiling visage into a snarl of rage as his eyes fell across Shanaz and he stumbled to a confused halt in the centre of the bunker chamber. He spun, checking the dark deserted tunnels.
‘Shanaz?’ he screamed, stumbling towards her. His hand reached out, fingers grasping her smashed jaw and sliding in the blood that soaked her smooth skin. ‘Shanaz!’
Tears rolled down his ebony cheeks.
The bullets cut into his back and Jahmal didn’t even know what had hit him.
Marcus licked his lips and closed his eyes, listening. He stood in the corridor, the AK47 sweat-slippery in his hands and he knew; knew that death had come and whoever was the aggressor had killed both Shanaz and Jahmal. They were good; they were fast and they were efficient.
Get a grip, screamed his brain.
He took several deep breaths, feeling sweat soak him beneath his dreads, prickling and itching.
He moved forward; not towards the gunfire, but away. He had heard the shots; perhaps fifty rounds in all had been fired. This wasn’t assassination; this was butchery. He had heard Jahmal’s cries; understood their intensity; knew the man - his friend, his comrade - was dead.
Marcus halted, dreadlocks swaying.
There were two tunnels before him.
‘Marcus!’ came the distant cry.
Marcus frowned; Gol?
There came another cry, this time of pain.
Gol? Injured?
Marcus moved forward, still cautious, twitching at every sigh of a breeze in the tunnels. He came to a round low room, dim-lit with four tunnels leading from the chamber.
He halted.
He turned, turned again—
And saw the figure. His eyes widened. The barrel of the AK47 swung around but it was too late and the SMG was already pointing at him and he saw the gentle flex of muscle and tendon and could read the figure; could read its amorality.
His eyes closed—
A great sigh escaped his lips.
And the game was over.
Langan was seated on the edge of a rock, gaze locked on the distant canyon below as the battle raged on. He watched the plumes of smoke reaching for the sky and shook his head in disbelief; Spiral_F’s air defences were still operational.
The Comanche was useless.
Awesomely powerful, but useless.
‘Why didn’t you switch them off, Gol?’
Behind Langan squatted the Comanche - still in jungle camouflage - its engines idle. All systems were on-line, primed and ready to fire; he could have her in the air in thirty seconds if he had to - and Langan knew that when the time came he would have to move fast.
He heard the screaming engine... and then engines. Plural.
Company.
Langan ran to the Comanche and climbed aboard - he suddenly had a bad feeling and he primed the engines, fired them, listened to injectors and turbos whining as the twin LHTec spun up the rotors. He watched the gauges roll smoothly into life. He armed the weapons systems and rested his chin on his hands, staring from the cockpit at the stretch of road that led from the crest of the rise and straight towards this little secluded area where he had chosen, thoughtfully, to hide.
The Cherokee leaped into view, sped towards the Comanche and veered to one side. Brakes engaged and the Cherokee left long parallel grooves in the sand. Three heavy speeding trucks appeared in hot pursuit; Natasha leaped from the Cherokee, dragging Carter with her ... he was stumbling, practically unconscious and a little delirious, unaware of what was actually happening or where he was, or even what his fucking name was ...
‘They the enemy?’ shouted Langan calmly over the rising whine of the rotors.
‘Fuck ‘em hard,’ screamed Natasha.
Langan flicked a switch; his HIDSS helmet sprang to life. He calmly selected a target and the General Electric MiniGun sped up and hit five thousand revs. With calm smooth movements Langan released the payload of bullets.
Thousands of heavy-calibre rounds roared across the track, smashed through the trucks and sent them ploughing into one another. The Nex inside them became nothing more than merged blood-pulps, purple bloodied sacks of flesh and smashed bone. One truck exploded, fire roaring up into the sky, small pieces of burning metal describing arcs and then thumping into the sand. Another truck rolled, lame and limping, towards the Comanche.
There was a gentle whine as the MiniGun rolled down, metallic clacks rattling through the sudden calm.
Langan leaped down from the cockpit.
‘Where’s Gol?’
‘No idea,’ said Natasha. ‘But I think we need to move fast!’
Langan helped Natasha to get the wounded, groaning form of Carter into the rear of the cockpit. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s going to be a tight squeeze. It’s only really designed for two.’
‘We’ll manage,’ said Natasha. ‘Have you got medical supplies?’
‘All on board. Let’s get moving.’
The rotors spun up, and with a roar the Comanche leaped into the sky and sped across the clear blue, sun glinting from the flashing rotors, the aircraft’s proximity missile-warning systems screaming at Langan. The engines howled with power as the Comanche skirted the valley and orange-tree orchards where the battle still raged.
Natasha found the appropriate panel and slid it back. She took out the medical supplies, removed sterile seals and gave Carter an injection of morphine that eased his pain and knocked him out. His colour was bad and she hoped he wouldn’t need blood ... She squeezed Carter to one side of the narrow aperture in which she was supposed to work, and to the background music of the rotors thumping she struggled to remove his jacket, and then cut away his shirt around the wound gouged by the spinning bullet.
‘I don’t see much I can do down there,’ said Langan. ‘The air defences are still armed; even I’m not stupid enough to take on ground-to-air missiles. No fucking way.’
He took the Comanche lower; they swept wide around the orange orchards, the down draught from the rotors making trees and bushes sway and hiss. A few token shots followed the copter but it was moving far too swiftly. The Comanche lifted over the rim of the valley, banked steeply and Langan looked to Natasha for instructions.
‘What shall we do?’
‘Make another pass; Gol must be down there somewhere. If any fucker can get out alive, it’s Gol.’ They returned, sweeping as low as Langan dared with tanks in the vicinity. The Comanche described broad circles several more times. There was no sign of Gol, nor of any other fleeing survivors for that matter. Machine guns were still firing, but as they circled the exchanges of fire became more and more sporadic.
‘Can you see your scanner?’ shouted back Langan.
‘Yeah,’ replied Natasha sombrely.
‘See the yellow dots? Identified and tagged as Sikorsky Apaches. Probably bringing in more Nex. The reinforcements have arrived and I don’t really want to be hanging around when they turn up. Look.’ He pointed to a dial. ‘The air defences have just gone down - shit, just in time for the Apaches. I think the Nex must be controlling them, using the defences to keep me out of play. I think they underestimated Gol’s little
group, don’t you?’
‘I don’t call several hundred Nex and a load of tanks underestimation. So, what can we do now?’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Langan. ‘I just follow Gol’s instructions. And seeing that you are his daughter... well...’
‘How did you know that?’
‘We have this wonderful thing called communication.’
‘Oh.’
‘How’s Carter?’
‘Out for the moment. I’m just glad the bullet passed through him - I’m not sure I could remove one if it was lodged in his body.’
‘Don’t get blood on the seats.’
‘I don’t think he’s got much left.’
Natasha removed the blood-soaked padding. Cut free more shirt. Grimaced at what she saw; she took some tweezers and moved Carter to allow her to see inside the wound where scorched pieces of shirt were lodged.
‘I’ve got something on the scanner.’
‘What is it?’
‘Five figures. Running ... across the top of one of the ridges ...’
‘Head for them. Let’s snoop.’
The Comanche banked, rising straight towards the glinting sunlight. Like a bullet it hurtled across the sky and then suddenly dropped, gliding in a descending arc towards—
A high ridge of red rock overlooking a fast-flowing narrow river, deep within a red-walled valley; a rocky V-shaped crevasse that went on down for ever.
Natasha could see distant figures, sprinting over the rocks—
And she recognised Gol.
‘He’s on his own,’ said Langan.
‘Can you shoot his pursuers?’
‘At this speed? I’ll cut the whole fucking group in half! Gol’s too close to them ... I can’t distinguish the targets, not with a fucking MiniGun anyway...’
The Comanche screamed over the ridge and banked at a distance, rotors flashing silver against the sun; and then they returned for a second pass. Gol was sprinting ahead of four pursuing Nex. He was unarmed... and carrying something in his clenched fist that sparkled with rainbow colours and then—
In a flash they were over and gone.
The Comanche banked once more - a distant whirring insect to those on the ground—
‘If I touch down, we could be overrun,’ hissed Langan. ‘They’ve got SMGs and we’ve got a man down.’