Quake

by Andy Remic

  The blast had sliced a layer from the side of its face, arm and torso, and one eye was mangled, hanging against its black armoured cheek. Its claw moved to its side and there was blood and gore there too - from the incredible impact with the bridge’s iron strut. But it pulled itself to its full height and a deep-throated chuckle rolled out across the bridge.

  Carter faltered but his face set in a grim line. He knew he had to finish this thing and finish it now. He accelerated towards the ScorpNex, blood coating his face in a violent demon mask. The creature suddenly dropped to a crouch and leapt forward powerfully to meet Carter head on.

  CHAPTER 10

  WORLDSCALE

  Jam dreamed.

  ‘You killed them.’

  He stared at Nicky’s face. Tears flowed down her red-puffed cheeks and he hung his head in shame, staring at his scuffed boots, then rubbed at his face and looked up again.

  The accusation in her eyes felled him more easily than any bullet.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said softly, his own tears flowing.

  ‘You even killed the fucking children,’ she snarled. She stepped forward and hit him then, a heavy right uppercut that made him rock. He absorbed the punch, eyes staring down, and tried to explain but everything swirled in his brain and his thoughts were clouded, sluggish, confused.

  ‘You ripped them apart.’

  ‘It wasn’t me!’

  ‘You tore off the children’s faces, you fucking bastard, I saw it, saw it all... and you will rot in hell for what you have done ...’

  Jam’s head jerked up. His eyes suddenly narrowed, and he lashed out, claw slicing through Nicky’s neck and ripping her from collarbone to breastbone with a sickening wet crunch of torn flesh and crackles of snapping tendon and gristle. Her body peeled apart in two segments that hit the ground dead, without making a sound. Her blood pooled out and her eyes grew glazed, staring blankly at the wall. Jam’s head tilted to one side, staring at her in contemplation and he reached out to nudge her separate halves with his foot.

  Jam awoke in the dark. He was crying. The chamber was cool and that pleased him, the chill on his flesh soothing his raging mind. He shifted, awkwardly, joints stiff as he rolled to his feet with clacks of armour. His head tilted and he could feel saliva pooling in his mouth, between jaws that would not close properly—

  But then—

  That was him, wasn’t it? He had always been this way.

  He moved to a wide bowl of water and stared down through the gloom at his gently swaying reflection. His small copper eyes took in the patches of black - almost as if it was scorched - armour on his face, twisting and merging with raw pink flesh. His jaws worked continuously, tiny movements almost as if he was chewing, and he could feel his back teeth grinding together.

  Remember?

  And he remembered the woman from his dream.

  She had been crying.

  Why? he thought.

  The children he’d killed - they’d been nothing more than fresh meat, the meat of the enemy. They would have grown into soldiers and come looking for the Nex with guns and death - it had been a simple extermination process. In the same way that you would step on an insect...

  Jam frowned, his mind spinning.

  He could still see the look of pain in the dream-woman’s eyes, and it confused him. She knew him; but he could not remember her name and that was strange. It burned him ...

  Her pain.

  Jam curled up and sleep claimed him quickly in a black embrace.

  Durell stared down at the map, its glow softly illuminating his disfigured face. Colours glittered across this synthetic microcosmic world and Durell nodded to himself, small tongue darting out to lick his dry lips.

  He felt ... nervous.

  Things were coming together.

  Plans were merging.

  And he could feel the shifting of power.

  Spiral, he thought.

  He felt Gol enter the room behind him and he tensed a little. He laughed softly to himself, revelling in the knowledge that Gol was Nex, a slice of Nex, but not quite a pure-breed.

  Not so Jam.

  No. Durell smiled. Jam had turned out a thousand times more pure than he could ever have dreamed possible. Jam had proved himself to be beyond reproach ... a true Nex ... true ScorpNex—

  ‘It failed,’ said Gol.

  Durell turned, unable to read the emotion in Gol’s expression.

  ‘So be it. We were lucky with Jam; the ScorpNex protocol is extremely difficult to replicate and it will take time. However, with Jam’s conversion I am pleased that we have yet another general willing to die for our cause.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gol, I believe you had a little chat with Kattenheim?’

  ‘Yes. He—’ Gol smiled. ‘He does not quite believe that I am with you. He doubts my loyalty, I think.’

  ‘Ignore him. Kat always did overreact. But he is strong and powerful and fast - don’t antagonise him unduly because I need you both with me.’

  Gol gave a single nod.

  ‘What are your thoughts on Natasha?’

  ‘It is a very sad day,’ said Gol carefully. ‘She is my daughter and I love her. But she has chosen her own road in life. She has chosen Spiral and she has chosen to die for Spiral ... I cannot protect her for ever. She is her own person now.’

  ‘Very philosophical. Now.’ Durell’s hand came out, resting on Gol’s shoulder. Gol looked deep into those slit-ted copper eyes and sensed that Durell was waiting for a reaction: a glimmer of horror or disgust or revulsion—

  Gol forced his face to remain calm, unmoving.

  ‘I have a job for you. A delivery.’

  ‘The Foundation Stones?’

  ‘Yes, four of them. I want you to go with Kattenheim and Jam, make the delivery and check their installations. Then we can work on links to the QHub and initiate the QEngine with its final settings.’

  ‘Is the army mobilised?’

  ‘Nex soldiers are on the move,’ said Durell softly. ‘The pieces of the jigsaw are slotting neatly into place.’

  Gol nodded again. He understood.

  The small black chopper piloted by Kattenheim came in low over the desert, swirling a dust storm in its wake, the thudding of its rotors echoing over the vast flat plain. Rocks loomed from the shifting sand dunes and Kat brought the chopper down with swift precise movements. The blades spun down whining as Gol leapt out onto the flat rocks, closely followed by Jam who shielded his eyes with an armoured black forearm.

  Grabbing a pack, Kat followed and the three of them stood on the desert sand. They gazed at the twenty Nex who had spilled from low wooden barracks to meet them, sub-machine guns at the ready. One of them came forward and saluted.

  Kat returned the salute. ‘Are events progressing?’

  ‘They are,’ came the sibilant, asexual voice. ‘We have been expecting you.’

  They walked across the sand-blown rocks under the beating sun. Gol could see a massive pen where perhaps a hundred huge trucks were parked. As they moved past the rocks the true scale of this particular encampment opened up in front of him - there were a thousand hastily constructed wooden barracks containing perhaps thirty thousand Nex in all. The desert camp during this hour of the day was quiet, with only a few Nex scouts running errands - it was at night, during the cooler hours, when it truly came alive.

  Entering a wooden cabin, where fans cooled the dry desert air, Kat moved immediately to a table filled with maps. Gol stood, waiting, and looked occasionally at Jam.

  This new ScorpNex - a Skein Blending of a man he had once known - had shown no recognition. Years earlier Gol had scripted several missions with Jam - in their younger and wilder days - but this transformation, this blending seemed to have eyes and mind for one thing and one thing only: combat - combat leading to death and destruction.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Jam turned, small copper eyes staring at Gol, and Gol resisted the urge to take a step back. Jam’s hug
e shoulders rolled as he moved and turned and stared out over the desert.

  ‘Too hot,’ he rumbled.

  ‘No, the scale of the Nex.’

  ‘There are many,’ Jam said, drooling long strings to the wooden boards. ‘They put up good fight when the time comes - they put up good kill.’

  ‘And that time may be sooner than you think,’ said Kat, rejoining them and smiling grimly. ‘We got some nosy fucking Americans in an armoured column advancing a few kilometres to the west - I think we need to go and give them a taste of our power.’

  ‘I thought we were under orders to avoid conflict until the time had come?’

  ‘The time is here and now,’ said Kattenheim softly, his red eyes alive. ‘Durell has given the order. From this point forward we are Active.’

  Kat led the way, and Gol and Jam followed, climbing back into the small black helicopter. Within a few seconds the rotors spun into life and the chopper jumped into the air.

  ‘There,’ said Kat.

  Fifty tanks, engines revving, moved out from a giant compound with thick timber walls and a massive sagging tarpaulin roof; in desert colours they blended in well. Around fifty black helicopters leapt into the air behind Kat and flew past in air support of the heavy section of armoured ground vehicles ...

  ‘This should be good kill,’ said Jam.

  ‘This is just a taster,’ replied Kat, and powered forward in the wake of the small army.

  The American armoured column had halted, engines rumbling, awaiting the return of their scouts. Infantry and desert-modified Humvees backed up the thirty M1 Abrams tanks in full desert regalia. The units had been detoured due to intelligence provided from an anonymous source. There were perhaps a hundred men in the column, and they were not expecting a fight.

  Sergeant Thorpe stood on the tank’s turret, digital binoculars held to her eyes and tongue licking at desert-scorched lips. She watched the scout’s Humvee bumping back towards them at high speed, a trail of sand whirling in its wake. She tutted in annoyance.

  ‘The dumb bastard will make us stand out for miles!’

  She scanned the horizon but could see nothing else of interest. She cursed the desert for making her feel so hot and dry. She watched the Humvee slew to a halt, tyres half-buried in the soft sand, and knew, her heart sinking, that they might be digging the huge bastard out in a few short minutes—

  The driver, a squat reliable soldier named Hamill who sported a crew-cut, a good tan and expensive Croc-III shades, leapt out as if on fire and screamed, ‘They’re coming!’

  ‘Who are coming?’

  ‘The enemy!’

  Thorpe frowned from her position on the tank. She felt a shiver course through her despite the heat. ‘What fucking enemy?’ she growled, her voice husky with a sudden taint of fear.

  ‘Tanks!’ screamed Hamill, heading for a truck, boots ploughing sand. ‘Lots of fucking tanks!’

  Thorpe scanned the horizon once more. All she could see was the slowly settling wake of Hamill’s Humvee.

  ‘Cleo, scanners?’ she shouted.

  ‘Nothing, sarge.’

  ‘You sure?’

  “I’m fucking sure, sarge.’ Cleo sounded mightily pissed off. ‘Hamill must have been on the fucking vodka again, the drunken bastard. I tell you, he puts all our lives at risk ... what is it?’

  ‘Cleo,’ came Thorpe’s calm, calculating voice. ‘Are you sure those scanners show jack-shit?’

  ‘One hundred per cent positive, sarge.’

  ‘Contact!’ screamed Thorpe, bringing around her machine gun as the Nex tanks filled the horizon and the black swarm of helicopters leapt into view. Their sounds smashed across the desert and Thorpe watched in horror as sudden explosions echoed across the undulating plain ...

  Everything became a sudden madness. There came a whistling, then a crump. Thorpe saw one of the M1s picked up and tossed across the desert, fire blazing around its hull, gun twisted as it described an arc and connected with the ground, ploughing a trough and being ripped apart. Another tank was picked up, then another - and then the helicopters came in as Thorpe hit the dirt hard, rolling, her SA1000 rattling in her hands as the choppers swept overhead—

  Bullets flew all around.

  Trucks exploded.

  Thorpe heard screams.

  Something happened, and with her head spinning Sergeant Thorpe was thrown through the air. Something hit her hard in the back of her head, and she remembered staring at the sand and hearing roars and concussive booms all around her, and she wanted to roll over, to fight this sudden unprovoked enemy that had come from nowhere.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she moaned.

  She seemed to lie for an eternity where she’d fallen. She could feel blood running across her hips and belly.

  Her throat was dry, parched.

  Water, she thought. Just... water ...

  Hands rolled her over. Three dark figures stood over her, blocking out the sun, and in her confusion she could have sworn that their eyes glowed like copper, like tiny molten suns.

  ‘Water?’ she whispered.

  ‘Be quiet, bitch.’

  The sub-machine gun touched her face and blasted her pretty features in a spray of gore across the desert sand.

  The BBC London helicopter swept over the Thames, camera panning from the destroyed Houses of Parliament to the leaning, mortally wounded tower of Big Ben.

  ‘The whole of London mourns today for all those killed and maimed in a great tragedy,’ came the sombre voice of Mr McSouthern. ‘Here we witness the aftermath of the most terrible earthquake ever to hit the United Kingdom.’

  Again, the camera swept across the carnage.

  It zoomed in on collapsed buildings, cars crushed by massive slabs of concrete, exposed steel wire and sections of fallen brick. Emergency personnel and civilian volunteers picked their way through the devastation and tanks and bulldozers were being used by the military to clear a passage through some of the blocked roads.

  The vid_scene switched to the London Underground, where collapsed tunnels spewed crushed Tube trains, full of twisted limbs and bodies, to fill the screen. Blood pools lay still under flickering strip-lights as water gushed from smashed pipes above the subways and silent, stationary escalators, washing dirt, blood and mucus from the rictus death-grins of a thousand crushed commuters caught underground when the quake struck ...

  BBC London’s camera viewpoint switched then. It moved to the south coast of England, where a collapsing coastline had swallowed individual houses and whole small villages in a mammoth cave-in, taking them tumbling and sliding into the English Channel.

  No part of the country was unaffected; there were sweeping vid_scenes from Inverness, Glasgow, down through Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, London and onwards to Portsmouth ... fallen buildings, loss of power on a massive scale, overcrowded hospitals -a nation pushed to the limits of its emergency services in the sudden aftermath of an insane devastation.

  ‘The roads are severely gridlocked up and down the country,’ came the voice of Mr McSouthern, ‘and are causing endless difficulties for military personnel and vehicles who have been drafted in to help with the country-wide disaster zone ...’

  Within the hot, dry Libyan drilling station, the titanium-carbide VII drill bit rotated at high speed within its protective Plas-7 sheath, the rock and stone detritus sucked up and away by thick alloy-rubber hoses. Ivers stared from behind a mask of mud and rock flecks, eyes searching for defects or any hint that the drill bit was faltering - variations in speed or angle of descent, excess vibration, changes in the extracted rock slurry.

  The platform was a huge hardwood structure, set some four kilometres below the earth’s surface. It nestled, together with the Sub-3KM control quarters of the drilling rig, in a small hollow of rock. Ivers and his team of LVA-ENG Level-2 engineers worked in shifts and analysed data deep below the earth’s surface to make sure that the drilling process went smoothly. As their superiors always stressed: a dr
ill that doesn’t drill is a drill that loses money.

  ‘Slow her to twenty-five,’ shouted Ivers, back over his shoulder, then returned his gaze to the spinning drill bit. He felt tense, nervous. He hated this job. It had the allure of being extremely highly paid, but it was even more dangerous. If a titanium-carbide VII drill bit snapped at anything over 32 speed, then its operators would all be pulped to blood and liquid flesh.

  Ivers chewed his lip, craving a cigarette. Instead, he reached into his overalls and popped a stick of chewing gum into his mouth. He didn’t like gum but at least it gave him something to do with his jaws.

  Of medium height, with sandy-coloured hair, Ivers was quite stocky, with the trade-mark powerful arms and shoulders of the LVA engineer class: as the saying went, ‘To work a rig, a man has to be stronger than a fucking Pig’-

  A red light flashed, reflecting from the Plas-7 sheath. Ivers turned, frowning, and Kesstelavich gestured that somebody was coming. Ivers cursed, stepped forward to the TBD console and checked the readings. All were OK, tiny needles flickering in the amber. They were on target. The drilling was going according to plan, despite them pushing the machinery hard.

  Ivers turned, waiting for whoever it was to arrive and wiping sweat from his brow. Probably another fucking fuel inspector, he thought. I fucking hate inspectors. If a child, teenager or adult shows any inclination of wanting to become educated in the inspectorate, they should be taken behind the bike sheds and fucking shot in the back of the head, he growled to himself through his tough and tangy strawberry chewing gum.

  That’s how much he hated them: always fucking whining. Always finding some little tweak that supposedly had to be made, some fucking little justification for their hugely disproportionate salaries, and forever covering their own arses with a plethora of pointless paperwork.

  Wankers.

  Ivers frowned as the two figures came into view. The first was heavily robed, face hidden within the folds of a black cloak and, with a sudden, sinking feeling of dread he realised it had to be—

  The top man.

  The money behind the LVA phenomenon.