Quake

by Andy Remic

  She watched him move carefully through the snow and then crouch beside a stunted conifer tree. He was moving with great care, placing each foot with an infinity of consideration. Then he levelled the Browning and aimed. She heard the hiss of a silenced shot and nearly jumped as a mound of snow seemed to collapse - to reveal a camouflaged Nex bearing a sniper’s rifle. Carter signalled for Natasha to approach, and she checked the ECube again.

  ‘He wasn’t there, on the scanner.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How the fuck did you see him?’

  Carter’s breath steamed, and his eyes were twinkling. ‘Let’s just call it magic,’ he whispered. He moved towards the Nex and lifted the Heckler & Koch SN5 sniper rifle. ‘Good weapon,’ he said, hoisting it thoughtfully.

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘It is dead,’ Carter corrected gently. ‘It was the perimeter guard - we must be getting close.’

  ‘I don’t understand: they cloak the guards but not the compound where the ECube is showing hundreds?’

  ‘No point having a guard if he can be seen - even by a scanner. Nobody knows that this base - or whatever it is -is here. Why cloak it? What are the chances of somebody stumbling across it up here? Maybe it’s arrogance, or maybe you can’t cloak such a large group of Nex - we’ll have to sneak in and ask them.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘That’s what worries me.’

  Moving on through the heavy snow they exercised even greater caution until once more Carter signalled for a halt. They had been climbing a steep incline, an embankment peppered with trees, that overlooked a compound of some sort up ahead. Trees ringed the compound on ridges of land and snow, and low buildings of grey concrete blended naturally with the ground, barely visible - especially in this climate of snow and mist and from the air.

  ‘Probably left over from the Bright War,’ whispered Carter, gazing down at the buildings. There seemed to be some activity going on in them but very little outside.

  ‘They are all inside,’ whispered Natasha.

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t be sunbathing.’

  ‘The buildings look like barracks.’

  ‘Maybe. Who fucking knows what they’re doing? All I’m thinking about at the moment is one of those.’ Carter pointed, his movements cautious, to where a high fence surrounded a small square of cleared concrete on which sat four squat black helicopters.

  ‘Airlift?’

  ‘They look familiar,’ growled Carter, remembering the great air battle that had taken place between the Demolition Squads and the Nex over the Arctic seas and the improvised WarCentre created by Durell and Feuchter after they had betrayed Spiral. ‘Some bad shit is going down here.’

  ‘A problem for another day,’ said Natasha.

  ‘I agree. Come on.’

  They circled wide, Carter on the lookout for guards and snipers, his senses screaming at him and Kade making the occasional maddeningly sarcastic comment.

  Carter halted, gesturing. A guard was stationed outside the compound, protecting the helicopters with a heavy machine gun. ‘We need to get a bit closer.’

  They moved carefully, coming in on the guard’s blind side. Carter took him out with a single bullet to the back of the head.

  The helicopter enclosure was protected by a digitally locked gate; Carter knelt beside the fence and stared at its metallic strands. ‘Titanium IX, very advanced,’ he said, impressed. He removed his own ECube and a tiny silver beam emerged from it, slicing through the Titanium IX strands, making tiny pings.

  ‘How did you do that?’ said Natasha, frowning.

  ‘A new mod.’

  ‘Why doesn’t mine do that?’

  Carter smiled, cutting the final strand and bending the glowing edges wide. ‘Come on.’

  They squeezed through the opening and moved warily towards the first black helicopter, which was cloaked with a veil of snow. ‘This is too easy,’ muttered Natasha.

  ‘I agree, although I’m pretty sure they’re not expecting us. You hot-wire this baby and I’ll keep watch.’

  ‘You think they know we’re here?’

  ‘Maybe. But maybe they’re playing a game with us ...’

  Chilled by Carter’s words, and with the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, Natasha gently opened the cockpit and climbed in. With ECube in gloved hand, she began the complex process of hot-wiring the helicopter’s digital ignition, utilising her pre-Spiral hacking skills. She was illuminated by the curious witch-light of the snow-enclosed cockpit.

  Outside, Carter’s mouth was a grim line as his eyes scanned relentlessly around. The cold was seeping into his bones now. His head snapped to the right as a fall of snow toppled from the low branches of a wide pine. He realised that the Browning was already aimed and primed, and he lowered the weapon gently.

  There was a distant, snow-muffled click and Carter dropped to a crouch, gun ready.

  A figure stepped into the snow from one of the concrete buildings. He was athletic, broad-shouldered, and Carter could tell from his stance, the way he moved, that he was a warrior. He had shaved blond hair and a badly scarred head and face, and he was laughing unpleasantly. As he moved forward, a second figure strode out behind him. This individual was huge, towering a full head over the smaller man who was himself six feet tall. The giant wore a heavy black coat across his shoulders and his face was patched with black, as if he had suffered terrible burns that had scorched his skin. His eyes were small and round and copper, the face deformed and twisted to one side.

  ‘I’ve done it,’ whispered Natasha. ‘What the fuck is that?’

  At her hushed words, the deformed head swung round, stretching forward on a strange thick neck, the small eyes focusing on the helicopter, the crouched form of Carter, Natasha’s peeping face ...

  ‘Well done,’ snarled Carter.

  ‘It’s fucking looking at us!’

  The blond-haired man turned and stared at them. Carter growled, ‘Get that fucking chopper started - now!’ He lifted his Browning as the huge figure shrugged free the black coat to reveal a heavily muscled body, bare from the waist up, skin merging with black panels scattered across his chest and belly, gleaming as snow settled against their chitinous surface.

  ‘What is it?’ wondered Carter.

  ‘Just shoot the fucking thing,’ hissed Kade.

  Time seemed to slow as Carter lifted the Browning HiPower and took aim. The creature - or Nex, or whatever it was - lowered its head on bull-neck muscles and charged, heavy boots stamping through the snow, its speed incredible for something so big ...

  The door to the building, which still stood open, spat forth a stream of Nex carrying JK49s and aiming them at Carter and the helicopter. Kade was bellowing, ‘Trap, it’s a fucking trap,’ the words piercing Carter’s mind as his trigger finger squeezed and the Browning kicked back hard against the heel of his hand—

  The creature seemed to flinch to one side, and the bullet hissed past, taking a chunk out of the concrete of the building. Carter fired twice more, the third bullet ricocheting off one of the black armour plates but causing no damage ...

  Behind him the helicopter’s engines started and the rotors began to turn, slowly at first and then rapidly picking up speed. The man with blond hair was smiling, stare bright and arms folded, but there was something wrong with his eyes. Carter fired another two bullets as the giant creature reached the eighteen-feet-high fence and leapt, long claws extending from thick black fingers, and scrabbled upwards.

  ‘Carter!’ screamed Natasha.

  Carter fired several more rounds as the huge creature, small copper eyes staring fixedly at him, clambered up the fence and reached the top. The Browning boomed again, bullets slicing through the air and screeching off the armour plates. The final shot punched the creature back off the fence to land in the snow. Carter watched in horror as it rolled easily and climbed to its booted feet. It snarled, drool pooling from crooked teeth as blood poured fr
om two holes in its protected torso.

  ‘Give him to me,’ snarled Kade. ‘I will fuck him bad ...’

  More Nex were swarming from the low concrete building. Carter’s gaze met the red-scarred stare of the man with the shaved blond hair who nodded, almost as if meeting a friend in the street. Carter bared his teeth in a grimace.

  ‘Carter!’

  The helicopter’s engines screamed and howled under Natasha’s rough ministrations. The creature clambered up to the fence once more, claws gouging a path upwards. Carter watched in horror and fascination, as if in a dream - a waking nightmare. It leapt cleanly up and over as Carter’s sweat-slippery hands slotted the NeedleClip to the Browning with a precise click - the down draught from the chopper’s rotors was beating against his back but his stare was fixed intently on the mammoth creature that landed in the snow in front of him. It was too close for him to use the weapon. To kill it would be to kill himself. It smiled with twisted fangs.

  Carter sensed the helicopter lifting free of the snow. He felt the down draughts increase.

  ‘Let me,’ soothed Kade.

  The creature flexed its claws, stained with its own blood, and Carter tightened his grip on the trigger.

  To kill is to die, he thought...

  ‘Carter, here!’ screamed Natasha once more over the howling of the engines and rotors as he saw a massive group of Nex spread out beyond the fence with their weapons aimed and their faces covered by masks of grey and black. There were too many of them. Even if Carter killed this thing he would be cut to pieces in a machine-gun instant...

  Carter bared his teeth in a tight-jawed grimace. ‘You ready for me, you big fucker? You’re one ugly piece of shit, that’s for sure ... Come on, let’s see what you can do - let’s fucking dance.’

  Spiral Mainframe

  Data log #11952

  CLASSIFIED SADt/9083/SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

  Data Request 324#11952

  FEUCHTER Count

  Feuchter

  Count Feuchter; German professor, born in Schwalenberg, educated in Munich, London and Prague. Great-grandfather killed by the Nazis during World War II after being tortured somewhere on the German/Austrian border. Mother and two sons fled to Italy, then to England for protection after the war was over; Feuchter stemmed from this bloodline.

  He was an expert in computing systems, specialising in processor function and artificial intelligence. He helped pioneer the QII and QIII military processors before turning traitor against Spiral with a group of other operatives.

  Among other things, Feuchter was also heavily involved in the Nx5 Project and it is now believed that he continued this research illegally after Spiral withdrew funding and the project was killed. All the Nx5 subjects were apparently destroyed. It was unknown at the time that Feuchter had, in fact, experimented on himself and was willing to take his machinations much further.

  He was responsible for many civilian deaths, and a Warrantl2 was issued by Spiral in 2XXX after various Spiral DemolSquads were assassinated.

  Count Feuchter was killed during the Spiral_mobile mission by operative Cartervbl2. His body was never recovered.

  Keyword SEARCH>>DURELL, QIII [lvlz], NEX [lvlz] SPIRAL_Q, SAD, SP1RAL_R

  CHAPTER 5

  BLACK PLANET

  Jam swam in a world of darkness. Tiny fish-lights glittered and he watched them in fascination as they swam around and around as if in a bowl. But then a slice of red ripped across his vision and with it came a slashing glass shard of pain ... deep heart-core pain that he could not push away.

  His eyelids flickered open.

  Darkness. Dry darkness.

  And blows. Boots, suddenly crashing into his ribs and back and head. Dark silhouettes stood over him, amorphous shapes that wobbled and wavered, illuminated from behind by the yellow orange flickering of live flames. Jam curled into a tighter ball, his broken teeth gritting together and filling his mouth with blood and pieces of bone.

  The blows continued, and a deep voice said, ‘He’s awake.’

  The blows increased in intensity, smashing into Jam, pounding him against an anvil of agony. He felt a rib break with an audible crack but the pain flowed all through him and was everywhere, a dull throbbing interspersed with the thud of heavy steel-capped boots -connecting with his flesh. He felt blood pooling under his face on the dry dusty floor, on the cool stone and he watched it with interest, his vision shaking, vibrating, as the blows continued to rock him and the beating subsided. Gradually.

  The dark shapes retreated. Faded like ghosts.

  Jam coughed and tried to sit up. But he fell back to the stone floor once more. He closed his swollen eyes, his face pressed down against the warmth of his own blood and his eyes fluttered closed and eventually, after a long time, unconsciousness claimed him.

  He dreamed of Slater.

  Slater stood in the forest, talking through the gaping smile in his throat in a language that Jam found difficult to understand. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Slater, the flaps of sliced flesh puckering like lips. ‘You don’t fucking like what you see, eh? You did this to me, you bastard, you fucking did this to me ... your fucking complacency led us all to our deaths ...’

  ‘But I’m not dead!’

  Laughter, spraying droplets of blood.

  Jam tried to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and he tried, tried so hard to force the words from his mouth but it would not work, his tongue and lips would not cooperate and he could not breathe, awesome pain was smashing through his chest and ribs and he could not exhale the air with which to apologise to this man, one of his greatest friends.

  Slater moved closer towards him, blood splattering from the wound with each footfall and raining down across the woodland floor. His eyes were filled with pain and sadness.

  ‘You killed me, Jam,’ he cried and tears of blood ran down his cheeks. ‘You fucking let me die out there ... and it hurts so much ...’

  And now Jam was spinning - then reality kicked him in the face with a blow of brightness. Flames, flickering orange and yellow and dancing like a demon of fire, washed across his face and he blinked rapidly, pupils dilating, mouth opening to allow a single silent sigh to escape.

  ‘He’s awake again.’

  Shapes blocked out the flames once more, broad-shouldered figures that converged on Jam. A blow crashed against his shoulder, and he suddenly realised that they were using thick sticks like pickaxe handles. He tried to cry out ‘Stop!’ but the blows rained down and he tried to crawl away but his arm was broken and it gave way beneath him with a crunch as splintered bone poked and tore through his flesh and he screamed and that seemed to give his attackers a new lease of life as the blows rained heavier and harder and faster and the world was spinning spinning spinning and Jam fell into a deep well of Slater’s slopping gore-filled blood and lay there staring at the stars and tasting bitter salt.

  ‘When are you coming home?’

  Jam stared at Nicky’s face. It glowed with health and serenity. He took her chin in his cupped hand, smiled and, leaning forward, kissed her lips. She responded, and was warm and sweet and soft against him and he felt his love for this woman overwhelming his mind and their tongues danced and he felt at calm, at peace, at one with the world—

  He pulled away.

  Her mouth opened, and she said, ‘You said you’d never leave me, you’d said you were too good and they would never get you’ - and a stream of black maggots spewed from her throat wriggling past her white teeth and they covered him, tiny jaws biting at his flesh and tearing at his eyes and he tried to cover his face but they pushed between his fingers sliding on their own slime and juice and Jam screamed and his eyes flew open—

  The length of wood, the same diameter as the heavy end of a pool cue, connected with Jam’s forehead with a dull slap. Stars spun across his vision and he rolled, trying to get away from the agony, but the blows rained down on his back and shoulders and neck. Suddenly he turned, snarling and rolling to his knees and lashing out b
lindly. There came a grunt of surprise as his broken fingers hit one of the attackers’ groins and his fingers closed, his own bones crunching together as a heavy blow to the head smashed him down - so he grappled the nearest leg, pulling it close, and his blood-covered teeth closed on the struggling leg and he bit, he bit hard and he bit deep ... he felt the cloth give way to flesh and the blows were thundering down across his back but he would not let go and the muscle was warm and wet and salted and sliming like an eel in his mouth. Jam bit and bit and he chewed and he ripped the sliming calf muscle from the bone, tore it like tender juicy steak to the accompaniment of a high-pitched shrilling sound - until darkness claimed him in its long dark flexing claws.

  Jam came awake curled up in a ball, and for a long time there was no pain. Everything was gloomy, dry, and he stared at the black floor beneath him and the dust there, thick dust in which pools of his own saliva and blood had congealed. His tongue slowly worked around his dry mouth and he gently eased a piece of broken tooth to his desiccated lips, slowly pushed it out of his mouth and watched it fall to the dust. Pain started to come then, in gentle throbbing waves and from every single molecule of his whole being. He realised that his eyes were filled with gunk, gritty and dry. And then he tried to move.

  Pain lanced him.

  It was as if a million knives stabbed at his flesh.

  He suddenly realised that he was naked, but it did not matter. The pain was too great for him to worry about such trivial indignities.

  Faces flickered through his mind, their lineaments forming photographs that were models of clarity. Nicky, her sweet smile, her loving eyes. Slater, his broad strong caring face. TT, her sardonic smile and mocking gaze. And Carter - broad and strong and battered, a face that could be trusted and that offered no compromise.

  Gradually, the pain faded a little and Jam did not try to move again. Instead, he allowed his gaze to move around. At first he had thought this place was dark, but there was a reasonable light source - a dancing radiance from a flickering tallow torch. Flame-light caressed the walls, which were black and even and smooth, like obsidian or black marble although he could not make out any real details. He could see a bed, low down against the ground, a wide flat slab, again fashioned from obsidian or marble. And the floor, he realised, was not dust, but sand.