by Andy Remic
The Big Boss.
Ivers knew of this almost mythical figure through reputation and gossip. He had never met the fellow before, but had spoken to the friends of friends who had been inspected by this dark-robed money man, this suit without a suit. They said that he wore the robes because he had contracted some horrible disease that had eaten his flesh. Ivers shivered, feeling a little sick as he imagined strips of flesh hanging from a green pus-filled face.
And Ivers knew: this man was strict - far worse than any snivelling waddling bureaucratic turd of an inspector with a comedy clipboard.
Behind the dark-robed figure stood a large man with greying hair and beard. He had huge hands and a violent look about him, as if he should be wearing desert camouflage gear instead of the dark trousers and loose jacket that he now wore.
Ivers put a false smile on his face as the figures ignored Kesstelavich - who Ivers saw sigh with relief - and headed straight towards him and the TBD console.
‘Ivers,’ came the cool, intelligent voice from within the folds of the robe.
‘Yes, sir. It is a great honour for you to pay us a visit... ahh.’ He glanced up, but could see nothing but darkness within the folds of the hood, abetted by the natural gloom of the working LVA extraction platform. When nothing else was forthcoming, he blurted, ‘I - have not got another inspection scheduled for at least three days. I thought that our work was satisfactory and, and, and—’
‘It is,’ came the smooth voice. ‘Do not panic, Ivers. I am not here to inspect; in fact, your team has provided sterling service while in our employ.’ A hand - a claw -emerged from the robe and Ivers found himself taking the metal sheaves and staring at the place where the twisted darkened hand had briefly been. Suddenly, realising his rudeness, he glanced up into the darkness of the hood and felt sweat roll down his entire body, sticking overalls to his flesh in a clammy, uncomfortable embrace.
‘Release orders. You and your team are relieved of duty for exactly one hour.’
‘I... but...’
‘Scan the documents. They are all the authorisation you need.’
Ivers turned, clumsily juggling with the metal sheaves. He scanned them on the console and then turned back, a look of confusion on his face. ‘I ...’
‘Drop the speed to five.’
‘Five? But it—’
‘Do not question me, Ivers. Drop the speed to five - then take your unexpected one-hour break and be thankful that you do not need to hear answers to questions you really should not be asking.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ivers gathered his documents and together with Kesstelavich, Rothwell, Oldroyd and Kenny headed for the pressure lifts. He glanced back once as the figure watched him depart, and saw the large grey-haired man produce a small pack and stare at the engineers until they disappeared into the gloom of the vertical ascent…
Durell threw back his hood as Gol passed him the QEngine - the ‘Foundation Stone’.
Durell smiled, the smile looking strange against his deformed face.
‘Let us show the world what we can do,’ he said softly.
The Priest wore a grey robe, wooden rosary beads swung against his massive barrel chest and a small battered leather Bible nestled in his huge palms. He stroked the cover, his gold-flecked brown eyes closed for the moment, mouth silently incanting passages from his Holy Book -the words of his God. Outside the cockpit windows of the Comanche the desert rolled by, and eventually The Priest opened his eyes. His keen gaze focused on the featureless expanse beneath him.
‘We shall be there soon,’ said Heneghan, her voice soft. Her head was encased within the HIDSS and hid her shoulder-length hair and smiling oval face.
‘We will be there when God allows, sister,’ came the soothing voice of The Priest as he folded his hands humbly in his lap, at peace with the world.
The Comanche flashed through the clear blue skies, its engines humming.
The sun beat tattoos of light across its dull desert camouflage.
And below, the world rolled by uncaringly.
An hour passed, and The Priest came awake with a start. Getting old, he chided himself sombrely, and yawned, stretching his considerable frame in the confines of the Comanche’s cockpit. Getting too old for this.
‘ETA four minutes.’
‘Thank you, Heneghan. May God bless your children.’
‘I’m sure he already has,’ she said.
‘No, no,’ said The Priest shaking his head in all seriousness. ‘I would know about that sort of thing.’
The HIDSS helmet turned, the blacked-out insect-eye panels staring hard at The Priest. He smiled gently at the pilot and gazed out of the window at the distant mountains past Al Hijaz. Saudi Arabia - the Arabian Peninsula.
Rub al’Khali - the Great Sandy Desert.
Rub al’Khali - three hundred thousand square miles of mostly unexplored desert. Three hundred thousand square miles of sand and rock, a plateau baked tinder the scorching sun for millennia, a land without any obvious attractions ... And once the home of Spiral_Q: a high-tech base where the major development of the military QIII Cubic Processor had taken place under the watchful gaze of a man named Count Feuchter.
The Priest watched calmly as the Comanche banked, sunlight gleaming from its fuselage, and soared in a huge arc around the blast zone that marked the erstwhile site of Spiral_Q. A huge crater squatted against the desert - and although the preceding year had allowed much of the area to be reclaimed by the desert sands, the enclosed vertical shaft beneath the surface still remained - along with much half-buried detritus of twisted alloy, steel and shattered glass.
‘Take us down,’ said The Priest softly.
The Comanche settled gently, its rotors whipping up huge sand eddies. Heneghan slowly shut down the engines but left them primed - in case they needed to lift off in an emergency.
Heneghan had been on missions with The Priest before.
And they were never simple ...
Opening the cockpit, The Priest stuck his nose out into the heat and looked around. He climbed down and jumped, sandals sinking a little and the hot desert sand burning his toes. He breathed deeply, enjoying the fragrance of purity within the Empty Quarter; enjoying the sudden rise in temperature. It reminded him of thick black coffee, lapping blue sea water on luxurious sandy beaches, and snorting camels with thick strings of saliva between their evil teeth.
Smiling softly and ignoring his new-found discomforts, and still holding his Bible, The Priest moved across the sand towards the site of what had once been Spiral_Q.
‘It’s been a long time, Lord,’ he muttered, glancing up into the vast blue vault above him. The sun burned down and the Priest felt a single trickle of sweat roll down his body beneath his grey robes. He smiled, nodding in understanding. ‘These things are sent to test us.’
Heneghan had set the Comanche down a good distance from the Spiral_Q blast site; the Comanche’s scanners had reported that the ground was extremely unstable - especially for heavy vehicles - and so The Priest toiled across the desert under the sun, occasionally reaching up to touch the string of wooden beads around his throat and muttering words into the sky.
He halted as he came to the first signs of the bomb blast and High-J explosion.
A twisted length of alloy, perhaps eight metres long, lay half buried by sand. Parts of the metal were fused with glass. The Priest found himself shivering involuntarily.
It must have been a huge and devastating explosion, he realised.
A true vision of Hell.
He waded on through the soft wind-blown sand, past more twisted melted struts and a huge ball of fused glass, twisted and deformed and blackened. The Priest gradually worked his way towards the epicentre of the explosion site, reaching the edges where a rim of sand had been superheated into black glass, now sand-blown and weathered in rugged sections. He halted and gripped his Bible tightly as if seeking some strength from above.
‘The infidels wreaked much havoc on our wo
rld!’ he boomed, his voice echoing around the pit in the sand. His eyes went suddenly wide in his broad strong face, and his hair whipped wildly in the desert wind. He grinned then, and sidled towards the edge of the huge crater.
The Priest moved closer, pocketing his Bible in a hidden pouch inside the long grey robe. He dropped to his belly and edged even nearer to the edge. He felt the ground shifting beneath him, gently, in warning, and gritted his teeth as sand blew into his eyes. A warm wind drifted up from the pit.
Pulling free a tiny alloy device, The Priest looked behind him and attached it to a large block of melted metal. Tiny motors whirred and the device - a ‘Parasite’ Skimmer - ate into the metal and secured itself. The Priest pulled on a pair of gloves and, gripping a length of thin, almost silken thread, turned to lower himself over the edge of the abyss ...
The world seemed to go suddenly quiet. And dark. Sand drifted down after him, getting into his nose and mouth and making him splutter a little. His sandals scrabbled against the wall and then he swung out, drifting through nothingness. He dropped like a lead weight, rotating slowly into the gloom, which slowly enveloped him.
As he descended, tiny motors droning almost silently above, his eyes began to adjust so that he could scan the walls and the remains of the twisted beams. For a moment he touched down, on an old section of buckled alloy floor. His descent halted, The Priest pulled free his Spiral-issue ECube and set it to scan. Blue digits flickered, illuminating his face with an eldritch glow.
> ECube v5.0 ICARUS
> Initiating GTf Scan
> Scanning
> Codecs secured; Δ### ...
> 01001101 01010101 01011111 512enc
> Results......... 00000
The Priest cursed, and spat heavily into the gloom. More sand drifted down from above, spiral eddies which made the huge barrel-chested man want to sneeze.
Sandals slipped treacherously on the old smashed floor. He allowed himself to step free once more into the vastness of this blasted subterranean cavern and, dangling like a fish on a hook, he lowered himself deeper into the enveloping darkness.
He seemed to drift downwards for an age ...
The Spiral_Q building had been excavated deep ...
His sharp eyes scanned continuously, and three more times he halted to initiate his ECube. Three more times it gave him negative results.
‘Why hast thou forsaken me, Lord?’
The Priest rolled his eyes heavenwards - the heavens being a small square hole of light high above him - and then lowered himself deeper into the pit.
He saw more and more detritus that had survived the insane chemical stomping of the original High-J blast. Buckled panels littered with sand, huge sections of mingled glass and alloy twisted into bizarre alien formations and shot like bullets to embed themselves into the walls. Molten metal had run down the walls and cooled to hang in glittering globular stalactites from girders and battered steel H-sections.
Finally, he reached the bottom.
The Priest’s sandals touched down on a surface of merged metal and glass. Most of this hard base was covered with sand, which rose in great piles at either end of the huge blasted site and lay scattered in humps and drifts.
The Priest looked around in the ghostly light.
He shivered.
This is not a place for man, he realised.
Not even a place for God.
Warily, he pulled free his ECube and stopped, his hair ruffled by some cool breeze. Listening, he was now on the alert for intruders as he pulled a Glock 9mm from inside his robes, the gun small in his huge hands. He flicked free the safety catch with his thumb. His tongue licked against the dryness of his mouth.
Are they here?
Nex.
The Priest scanned again, then set his ECube to search for interlopers. His eyes narrowed as the tiny alloy device confirmed that they were alone. But he did not trust it. He was the sort of man who put his faith in his eyes, his ears and The Almighty - not in billions of dollars’ worth of computing technology.
The Priest made a short tour of what had been the structural basement of Spiral_Q. Below his sandals, through a four-foot slab of fused glass and metal, lay the original floor of the building - the base’s original base.
> ECube v5.0 ICARUS
> Initiating GTf Scan
> Scanning
> Codecs secured; Δ### ...
> 01001101 01010101 01011111 512enc
> Results.........11110
The Priest moved a few feet in one direction, eyes focused now, the Glock forgotten in his hand. He dropped to one knee and placed the ECube against the once-molten floor.
> Scanning
> Results.........11111
‘Bingo!’ he called piously.
The Priest climbed back to his feet and shook a little sand from his sandals. Again, something seemed to haunt him and his nostrils twitched. There was a faint metallic scent. He whirled around in a low crouch, Glock in his grip and stare searching—
‘Nothing.’
He laughed a hollow laugh and glanced up at the sunlight far above. He felt as though he was at the bottom of a huge coffin, or a deep tomb leading straight down into ...
Hell.
He traced patterns against the ECube and blue digits glowed for a moment. Then a narrow white beam sliced from the tiny alloy machine and swiftly cut a neat slender shaft of metal and glass from the recently formed false floor. Tiny claws gripped the top of this column and, grunting, the Priest pulled it free and laid it to one side.
The Priest knelt once more and peered down into the space thus exposed. He could make out a small alloy panel at the bottom, dusted with black from the original fires that had raged in the insane inferno ...
‘Ah,’ he said.
In the gloom behind The Priest, something uncurled. ‘Found you, you bugger.’ His gold-flecked eyes shone and a smile spread across his broad face. With the ECube buzzing, and his Glock forgotten on the floor to one side, The Priest shuffled and leaned forward, his gaze fixed, his hand stretching out and his brain spinning at the implications of what he had discovered ...
A cold breeze blew—
Behind The Priest, talons slid free of their armoured casings, touching softly against the fused glass floor of Spiral_Q as slitted copper eyes opened - and blinked lazily in the gloom.
Spiral Mainframe
Data log #12327
CLASSIFIED SADt/5345/SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT
Data Request 324#12327
DURELL
All existing files relating to Durell were destroyed (by the man himself) prior to his betrayal of Spiral.
It is known that he was heavily involved in the Nx5 Project early on in his career. He worked with Gol and Count Feuchter. It is known that he carried on with this work illegally after Spiral withdrew funding and closed down the operations.
It is believed Durell was the instigator in creating the Spiral_mobile, an anti-Spiral warship designed to overthrow world powers and take control of the world’s military and financial institutions via the all-powerful QuanTech Edition 3 processor.
Cartervbl2 filed a report in December 2XXX relating to the death of Durell at his own hand. Nobody was ever recovered and there is suspicion that Durell is still at large.
Durell is the most dangerous individual ever encountered by Spiral. His knowledge and lust for power are insatiable. He is considered extremely dangerous and ranks No. 1 on Spiral’s terrorist hit list.
Substantial rewards are offered for information leading to his capture and/or extermination.
Keyword SEARCH>> NEX, SAD, SPIRAL_sadt, DURELL, FEUCHTER, SPIRAL_mobile
PART TWO
LITTLE FLAME
and i hate your country
and i hate your world
i hate your god’s people
who breed on earth
over to the other side
i’m caught stepping out
i’m gonna recreate a religious experience
to tear my fucking heart out
Chord of Souls
McCoy/Fields of the Nephilim
ADVERTISING FEATURE
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Smiling American soldier puts armoured arm around dishevelled refugee figure and gives him a hug, ignoring the JK49 swinging against the feeble refugee’s legs - Scene dissolves into—> A disco full of Korean and Norwegian soldiers, drinking together, laughing, soon joined by mechanics with greasy arms and oil-stained fingers who proclaim loudly the benefits of LVA mod upgrades-*
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Scene dissolves into—> Children running along a dirt road under the pounding rain. Behind them stands a small unkempt boy in the road, hair dishevelled, face grubby, eyes red from crying. He is squawking as his ex-friends run away and leave him whining in the road ...
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Car sweeps past, stops, picks up the little boy - the sun comes out, the world burgeons with greenery and sparkles with flowers, the boy giggles and everything is all right. Car disappears, sporting bumper sticker saying: LVA, make the RIGHT CHOICE
Scene/text scroll R—>L [Arial black] acr. vid: