Biohell (45 page)

“Could be booby-trapped.”

“We’ll soon find out.”

Franco flipped free the lid and
gazed at a black screen. A small red light blinked on off, on off, on off. The
screen flickered, and a face materialised. It was lined with modest age, bore a
neat black beard and unblinking brown eyes which seemed to smile with an
internal humour.

“Voloshko,” hissed Franco, heart
thumping wild in his breast.

“That is correct, Mr Franco
Haggis, ex-Combat K soldier and recently vacated patient from The Mount
Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the ‘nice and caring and friendly home for the
mentally challenged’.” Voloshko sighed, as if all this really was a
drag.
“It
would seem, Mr Haggis, that Fate has a sense of humour. You have hidden under
my wings for quite some time, haven’t you boy? Taken my pay, used my
facilities, enjoyed the honour of serving under my banner? Then, when all I
want you to do is terminate a scumbag named Slick for violating my delicate and
fragile wife, you decide upon a route of disobedience and slaughter my men.” He
sighed again. His eyes were dark and hooded. He looked up, and a light source
illuminated them; now, meaningful hatred replaced the gentle humour.

Franco stared with a grim, bitter
look. “Get to the point, dickhead.”

Voloshko laughed, a tinkling of
ice cubes in a champagne flute. “As I said, Fate has a sense of humour.
Sometime, I pull jobs for NanoTek. They asked me to recover... something. I
recovered her. And would you believe it, her name is Melanie and she’s your—”
he laughed, “your
fucking
girlfriend.” He moved close to the screen, so
his face filled it from digital edge to digital edge. “If you want her back,
Franco, you better come and pay me a visit. Although the compensation I require
for your behaviour is... unorthodox.”

“Where will I find you?”

“Why, at The Hammer Syndicate’s
HQ. Come unarmed. Or I might just cut Melanie’s head off before you set foot
across the threshold. Are we clear on that point?”

Franco nodded.

“One last thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I left you a present. Oh, I see
you already found it.” He smiled a crooked smile, tutted, a click of tongue on
teeth, and as the camera zoomed away he brushed a fleck of dust from his
perfect pink crushed-coral jacket. “I do so
despise
children. So
annoying, don’t you find?”

The screen died. Franco stared at
it for a long time.

Keenan touched his arm. “We’ve
got to go to NanoTek. All roads lead there. They will have answers to
questions. Solutions to problems. NanoTek holds the key to the puzzle.”

“We’re going to get Mel.”

“Walk unarmed into a trap?
Franco, use your brain, man. It would be suicide! Insanity! We need to get to
NanoTek; Voloshko himself said he was pulling a job for NanoTek—they will have
answers, Franco, trust me on this.”

Franco whirled, staring deep in
Keenan’s eyes. “If it was Freya, or the girls, would you go and pay Voloshko a
visit? Would you step unarmed into his
fucking
lair and face whatever
bad shit he dared throw at you? Just for the smallest chance to rescue them?”

Keenan saw tears in Franco’s
eyes, and he grasped both Franco’s shoulders in a powerful grip. “I hear what
you’re saying, brother. I hear it good. But you are side-stepping logic.
Voloshko wants you dead, merely for some petty personal revenge. There is no
compensation. There is nothing you can do there. If you walk in unarmed... he’ll
blow your damn head off.”

There came a whisper of sound
from the bodies on the ground. Instantly, Franco pushed from Keenan and knelt,
scanning, until his lightly moving hand came to rest on Little Megan’s inert
form. Her eyes opened. She stared blind for a while, breathing shallow, ragged,
then her head turned and she smiled a watery smile.

“You came back,” she said, her
voice an angel’s whisper.

“We came back, little one,”
growled Franco, tears running freely down his cheeks and into his ginger beard.
“After all, we couldn’t be leaving you alone now, could we?”

“Where is Melanie? I like
Melanie. She sang for me, Franco. Did you hear her sing?”

“I heard her sing,” said Franco,
voice crackling with emotion.

“Are you there, Knuckles?”

“I’m here, Megan, you little
tinker.” Knuckles eyed the purple hole in Megan’s chest, and turned to Keenan.
Keenan gave a sharp shake of his head in the negative.

“I missed you, Nuck. I missed the
stories you used to tell. Will you tell me one now?”

“Of course I will, Megs.” He
coughed, but Little Megan had closed her eyes again. Her body gave a shudder,
and she was still. Franco checked for a pulse, then hung his head, crying.

Suddenly, he surged to his feet.
Rubbed savagely at spent tears. His head turned with a
crack
and he
stared hard at Keenan. “I’m going after Voloshko. I... understand it if you
head out for NanoTek. You are right. It’s the logical place to go. I will meet
you there... later.”

Keenan shook his head. Coughed. “No.
We’ll visit Voloshko together. The bastard has it coming.” His voice was
gentle. Smooth. An exhalation.

Franco cocked his Kekra. Patted
Knuckles on the head. Scowled off over the millions of skyscraper roofs and
points that formed the jagged, ragged skyline of the living
hell
known
as The City.

“Let’s kill us some urban
terrorists,” he said.

~ * ~

It
began to snow, a thick, oily, grey snow which settled massively from iron-black
clouds. Mr Ranger glanced up, face scrunching into a visage of absolute
displeasure. “What’s going on with this shit-hole’s damn weather?” he muttered,
then glanced down at the master controller in his gloved hand. A green glow
bathed his palm, and he sat on the tailgate of the groundvan, fighting the urge
to light another cigar. He was smoking so much his chest felt full of barbed
wire.

Where were they?

His machines, his AI killers,
his...
girls.

He smiled at that, but the smile
fell from his face like a tumbling mask. The GKs had lost (severed?) contact
some three hours previously; presumably, they had entered some signal leak-free
environment on their hunt for Combat K members Franco and Keenan... and the
mutant, Mel. Still, the comms silence made Ranger twitchy.

Moans echoed down the street, and
he glanced behind, into the van, which was loaded with all manner of
shotguns—the D5, and the new D6 variant—sub-machine guns, pistols, grenades and
even a couple of spare yukana swords.

“Come on.”

And on they came, drifting
towards him like elegant ghosts through falling oil snow. Lamia and Momos moved
smoothly, but Nyx limped, her hips crushed, her gait that of a deformed human.
Ranger whistled between his teeth, jumping from the van and rushing forward.

“What happened?”

The three GKs stopped, looked at
him with matt black eyes, then looked
past
him to something behind.
Ranger felt the birth of a shiver, and spun...

She was tall, with a voluptuous
athletic physique. Her hair was dark brown, bobbed, hugging her face in the
damp, snowy atmosphere. Her face was strikingly beautiful, her eyes a cold grey
and locked on Ranger. Her hands were bare, arms folded across her chest as she
leant against the side of Ranger’s van.

“Do I know you?” he said.

“No. But I know you. I
recommended your services to Dr Oz.”

Ranger nodded, taking in her
modest, integrated WarSuit—a new design he’d never before seen; and searching
her for weapons. All he could see was a single yukana sword sheathed on her
back. It was silver.

Ranger’s eyes moved to the van,
and his own stash of weapons. Dangerously out of reach. He smiled an easy
smile. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“I don’t mind if you burst into
flame.”

“Is there a problem?”

“You have failed.”

Ranger sucked on the cigar,
shaking his head. “The GKs failed.”

“You programmed the HuntScript.”

“Still... I need to read their
reports, to identify which environmental factors caused failure. Only then—”

“That’s enough.” Her voice was
low, eyes fixed on him. “Nyx? Momos? Lamia?”

She glanced towards the three
AIs. Ranger felt his heart leap, and he readied himself for action. What this
stupid
petty bureaucratic little Chief of NanoTek Security failed to understand
was that Ranger had put an apotheosis clause into the script; he had given the
machines
belief.
They thought he was their Lord. Their
God.
They
would obey only him.

The woman met his gaze. She
smiled. It was neat, and pretty.

“Kill him,” she said, and Ranger
turned, the controller still hot in his hand as the three GKs leapt at him,
weapons out, blades singing shrilly as disbelief clouded his eyes and he felt
the hot bite of metal through his flesh, peeling through skin, cutting muscle,
crashing through his bones like a train-wreck and a scream welled in his throat
as the AIs cut through him like butter, Lamia’s arm slamming through his chest,
twisting, pulling free his lungs so that he stood, swaying, staring at the twin
bags of bloodied flesh skewered like ripe fruit on her blade. Strings of flesh
and vein and tendon connected him to his excised lungs as a pain unimaginable
ate acid through him, filling his brain with bright lights and a gushing roar
like the ocean.
Impossible,
his brain tried to scream, as he floated out
on calm black waters towards a boat that waited patiently to carry him away...

Ranger’s corpse hit the ground
with a thump.

The three AIs stepped back, Nyx
twisting awkwardly.

The woman moved, boots squelching
in Ranger’s blood. She looked down into dead blue eyes. His mouth was open in
shock, tongue lolling uselessly. Blood speckled his lips and face like pepper.

The Chief of Security glanced up at
the three machines, which stood, motionless, awaiting their next instruction. “Get
in the van,” she said. “We need to repair Nyx’s fractured pelvis hydraulics.”

Lamia tilted her head. “What is
your name?”

The woman smiled. “You have known
me simply as 1. I am hardwired into your systems as The Primary. But I see you
are learning quickly from your environment. If we’re to have any kind of
feminine bonding, I suppose you can refer to me by my birth name.”

The GKs moved forward, feet
clashing through Ranger’s corpse. They leapt into the van, whirled, looked down
at the woman expectantly. She smiled, but her eyes remained cold; grey, and
cold; like a pall of nuclear ash on an extinct world.

“You can call me Pippa,” she
smiled.

~ * ~

PART III

SCOURGE

“Compassion is the basis of
morality.”

Schopenhauer.

~ * ~

CHAPTER 11

HAMMER & ANVIL

The
City played host to all manner of eccentric and esoteric architectural designs.
Never had so many planetary engineers been let loose with such a wild and
varied sandbox in which to pit their deviated experimental design-skills
against one another in ever-escalating, extravagant and downright
odd
examples
of building design.