Biohell (19 page)

“Yeah. They’re waiting for you,
Keenan.”

“I knew it was going to be a bad
day.”

“Franco’s down there on The City.
He’s your friend. You should help if you can.”

Keenan stared at the PopBot. “I
know that, Cam. I know.”

Cam remained silent, and they
watched grey fill their vision until tiny specks of light in the wall of grey
became huge docking mouths which grew and expanded, ringed with emergency doors
like rows of teeth. The Y Shuttle was sent like an unwilling sacrifice into a
moon-sized maw, and behind, spirals of alloy whirled and closed, sealing the
Shuttle in the belly of the Titan.

~ * ~

Doors
meshed and Keenan squinted out onto the ramp. Ten soldiers were waiting,
uniforms crisp and smart, weapons tracked on him. He strode down the ramp, boots
clumping, hands open palms outwards to show he was unarmed. A Widow Maker
dangled from his lips and he squinted through smoke as he stepped onto the vast
metal floor of the docking mouth.

“How’s it going, guys?” said
Keenan through a tight grin.

“Sir, please accompany us. Your
counsel is urgently requested.”

Keenan squinted at the badges of
rank on the young officer’s uniform. “Sir?” He laughed a hollow laugh. “And you
would be?”

“Captain J. K. Neggra.”

“This your ship, Captain?”

“Negative, Mr Keenan. This is a
Titan III. I don’t rank that high. I wish I did.”

They walked, and with a squawk
Cam found himself surrounded by a sudden flurry of BattleBots—far, far superior
to a simple PopBot mechanism. BattleBots were machines
built
for war.
They were matt green, and stamped with stencilled lettering. They growled and
jostled Cam into a holding cage. Cam decided not to argue as the hotbars
fizzed. Instead, he simply revelled in superior intellect.

Keenan was marched, smoking,
through long corridors and up endless speedy lifts. Finally, he was ushered
into a long low room glittering with terminals. The far wall was a sea of black
looking out onto the gulf of space. Distantly, The City glowed.

A man stood, surveying the vista.

Keenan walked forward, feeling
like a schoolboy approaching a headmaster. The man turned and smiled. He was
large, grey haired, with square sideburns and pock-marked skin. His face was
flat, jaw angular, eyes dark and unreadable. He was large-framed, and had put
on some weight since Keenan last saw him. Fat disguised muscle, but Keenan knew
this man was as strong as an ox. He had to be: he’d trained Keenan.

“How are you, old friend?” The
man’s voice was soft.

“You’ve heard about the junk
invasion of Galhari, General?”

“Straight to the point, Keenan.
As ever.”

Keenan stared hard at Steinhauer.
“It’s a subject close to my heart.”

“Then, yes. We have a Mobile
Incident Unit on path. The problem is, the junks are highly toxic—as you know.
And with ten million on the planet...” he let the sentence hang.

“It’s infected. So you can’t send
in the infantry.”

Steinhauer nodded, turned, stared
back at the distant glow of The City.

“They’ve poisoned it, Keenan. And
they poisoned you.”

“I’m not infected. Cam checked me
over.”

“You have forty-eight hours to
live. Unless I administer an antidote.”

Keenan held up his hands. “Whoa.
Hold on, Steinhauer. You forget—I know you, I know how you operate. You brought
us Combat K boys up real good; you allowed us to
think.
I trust you, but
I’m not sure I trust you
that much.”

“Yes!” hissed Steinhauer
suddenly, “I trained you, so use your brain
now,
Keenan. The Quad-Gal
fringes are awash with junks, millions of them, advancing, polluting, spreading
their toxic wrath. We thought they were extinct.
Ten million,
Cam
reported. Is that just the beginning? Where did they come from? What do they
want? Keenan, Cam told us what you carry. An excised SinScript. This could be
the key for us, the key to Quad-Gal Military halting the junks. And... we know
about Franco Haggis down there; you were to pay him a visit.” Steinhauer
smiled. His eyes glittered. “I suggest you still go ahead with that journey.
Catch up with your old friend. Have a chat. Things are... strained on the
planet at the moment, but we will give you every bit of help you need.”

“So this is a military mission,
now?”

“We need to know,” said
Steinhauer. He stared out over The City. “The plague is coming,” he said. “We’ve
grown too big, too decadent. It would seem we are going to be punished.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I will heal your toxic
affliction, Keenan, and give you co-ordinates where you can find a man down
there who will decode the SinScript. We need to understand the junks. Keenan,
the object you carry is like a gift from the gods.”

Keenan took a deep breath. “This
is official Combat K business?”

“Yes. Your Prohibition D has been
lifted.”

“No more sneaking around, then,”
grinned Keenan.

“No more sneaking,” agreed
Steinhauer.

Keenan moved to a settee, sat
down, rested back, rubbed at his pounding temples. “What’s going on down there,
General? Why the heavy metal orbit?”

“We will get to that in a moment,”
said Steinhauer. “For now, be satisfied that we’ll give you weapons. Bombs.
Permatex WarSuits. A Fast Attack Hornet. Anything you need.”

“All that just to find a man?”

“Get down there, link up with
your old Combat K unit, and carry out this mission.”

“My old Combat K unit? Ahh, so
that’s the Franco link. Convenient. For you.”

“Yes.” Steinhauer turned his
glittering gaze on Keenan. “And Pippa. She is down there. We can locate her for
you.”

“And why would I want you to do
that?”

“Combat K. Complete again. The
perfect military unit.” He sighed. “You’re going to need everything you’ve got.
It’s a warzone, Keenan. A killzone.”

“You still haven’t told me what’s
going on.”

“Things have taken a turn for...
the worse, shall we say.”

“Is it the junks?” Keenan’s voice
was hard. Bitter. He was thinking of the dead back on his home planet.

“No. It’s the people.”

“What, civilians?”

“Let me explain,” said
Steinhauer, leaning against the edge of his desk and folding his arms.

~ * ~

BLACK
AND WHITE NEWS CLIP

The City’s Premier News
Delivery Service

[available in:
print, TV, vid, mail, dig.bath, idem.implant, comm., kube, glass.wall, ggg,
galaxy.net
and eyelid transpose— all for a small monthly fee].

News clip GG/07/12/TBA:

The City is suffering under the iron fist
of a terrifying affliction! Millions of people have changed from loving, happy,
good and hardworking citizens into
creatures
from the deepest realms of
nightmare. Everyday folk have transmogrified into flesh-eating gun-toting
monsters, surging in swarms and packs and gangs across the now deserted city
streets, massacring everyone they meet, and sometimes even eating the corpses!
It has been rumoured that unfortunates who
have
changed are in fact
innocent people or carbon-based alien-forms who took a dose of
pirated, hacked
and cracked biomods,
the famous new technology from NanoTek, currently
running at revision 1.4. Further speculation has revealed that there
may
be
a basic flaw in the original nano-technological design, a major
bug
in
the code found in every one of the single miniature
nanobots
which
populate this supposedly wondrous new technology for human and alien
improvement, or as NanoTek like to call it in their marketing manifesto, “The
Organic Upgrade”. NanoTek have vehemently denied any and all accusations that
their nano-molecular technology is flawed, instead blaming it vehemently on the
pirates, crackers and code-freaks. Within the next 24 hours they will issue a
formal statement; probably vehemently. However, down at street level the
massacres, the mutilation, the murder and mayhem
will not stop.
Seven
independent private Urban Force groups have sent out large-scale squads of
SIMs, Slabs and Mercs, but all of these quite hefty private armies have been
overwhelmed in minutes and massacred to a pulp. It would seem the “zombies”, as
these mutated citizens are being affectionately called, are not just the dead
risen, not just the walking dead or a rampaging
dawn
of the dead—they
have, in fact, some semblance of
intellect.
This is a terrifying
concept! The zombies can, for example, operate a D5 shotgun. They can replace a
magazine in a H&K twin-barrel MP9. They can pilot a helicopter. And the
millions of zombies across The City have
tooled-up!
Various governing
factions on our lovable world have issued the following statement: “Stay off
the streets. Lock and barricade your doors. And whatever you do, do not attempt
to fight these creatures. Quad-Gal Unification Peace Forces have been informed,
and are currently in orbit in an observatory capacity, working closely with
NanoTek and other agencies to bring an end to this horror.” Our only final
worry is that of contagion. Can a zombie pass on this [suspected] hacked biomod
infection to a non-infected person or alien? At this early juncture, all we can
do is speculate. Be safe. Stay indoors. And whatever you do, carry a weapon—and
shoot for the knee-caps.

News clip: END.

~ * ~

Dr
Oz stood, surveying the darkened world. Lights glittered and he turned, pouring
himself a generous measure of antique brandy in the stygian gloom of this, the
dimly lit upper reaches of NanoTek T5. He took a tiny and considered sip, moved
across thick glass carpet, and past a wall of glittering hardware containing
six bio-immersion terminals finished in a stylish and moody chrome. Dr Oz moved
precisely, as if afraid to waste a single joule of energy. Carefully,
intimately, he sat at his huge mahogany boardroom desk as his desk-kube purred.

“Yes?”

“Mr Ranger is here.”

Dr Oz smiled, and peered off into
a darkened corner of the T5 suite where... something... brooded. He gave a nod,
imagining he could see
her
eyes (or was that just a trick of the light,
his imagination, his
fear?).
The movement was an almost indiscernible
dip of his chin. “Please, send Mr Ranger in.”

The door opened and a huge figure
blocked out the light. It squeezed awkwardly through the aperture and the only
thing Dr Oz could determine was a silhouette wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Smoke
plumed into the room, the heavy, acrid odour of cigar.

“I didn’t think anybody still
smoked those—or
at all,”
said Dr Oz to the bulky man. They both knew smoking
was dangerous beyond comprehension; an act, in fact, of educated suicide.

“I’m not just anybody,” came a
heavy drawl. The figure strode in, substantial boots thumping, and halted. He pushed
the brim of his wide hat up, but his face remained dark, lost in shadow. “You
have a job?”

Dr Oz ignored the omission of
sir.
It was something he did not normally tolerate. However, on this occasion,
he would live with it. “Mr Ranger. You come highly recommended by my...
contacts.” Again, his eyes moved to the corner of the room. It seemed cold
there. Colder than death. “It would appear I have a problem.”

“Problems are there to be solved,”
drawled Ranger. He took a drag on his cigar, and another poisonous cloud of tox
billowed out. Ceiling lights danced patterns through thick grey swirls.
Somewhere on Oz’s desk, a carcinogen monitor beeped.