Biohell (71 page)

~ * ~

The
SLAM Cruiser sped above the miniature world, lights cutting down through a
fast-scrolling darkness. The SLAM turned, banking swiftly, and flipped through
a phase-screen into another, vast, subterranean chamber filled with... nothing.

Keenan peered out of the circular
portal, out and down into an apparent infinity of space.

“I don’t like this,” muttered
Franco, staring forlornly at the HotWire bonds around his wrists.

Keenan and Pippa had been
similarly restrained, the Makarov neatly returned from Pippa’s shaking hands to
Steinhauer’s holster. “Wouldn’t like a little girl like you hurting herself,”
he smiled, as he eased free the weapon. She’d glanced back, then, towards Nyx
who held Pippa’s own yukana sword against the back of the Combat K woman’s
neck. Pippa snarled something unprintable.

Keenan watched as a vast, black,
nothing trailed past. The space killed any feeling of speed. “Hey, Oz. Big
place you have here.”

“NanoTek came late to The City,”
he said, rubbing at the wound on his throat so recently inflicted by Keenan’s
homemade bootlace garrotte. “By the time we arrived, there was very little
surface land remaining, at least not in the vast cubic areas we required. It
meant building either up into the sky... or down here, under the ocean, beneath
the rock. I like it down here. We’ve bought a million square kilometres. Ready
for expansion, you might say.”

“Expansion?”

“NanoTek is in a state of permanent
expansion,” said Oz, quietly. His eyes glittered. Red light danced in the
hollow of his mouth. “It is the way of things. The Nature of the Beast.”

“Hey, dickhead, why so much empty
space here, then?” Franco was scowling, and fiddling with his HotWire bonds.
Beside him, Mel was crooning softly to herself, rocking, apparently lost in
some kind of canine zombie song. Her drool was pooling in her lap.

Oz turned, regarding Franco as he
would something on the sole of his finely polished shoe. “The City has esoteric
building regulations. Not even a galaxy-spanning multi-armed conquering
conglomerate such as NanoTek can avoid the pointless pencil of bureaucracy
forever. Let’s just say there have been
interesting
planning meetings.
And some men, stiff-collared paper-shuffling arse-sniffing bureaucrats... well,
they don’t know when to back down. Even when it threatens their health.” He
smiled, a dark, blood-oil smile.

The SLAM Cruiser cruised through
wide tunnels, narrow tunnels, twisting tunnels, vast empty caverns, caverns
filled with underground lakes sporting gentle ripples sparkling under the SLAM
Cruiser’s lights. Franco shivered, witnessing these vast stretches of
underground water; he’d had a bad experience in one, once; it had left him
mentally scarred, or at least, riddled with scar tissue on top of all the other
mentally unbalanced wreaths of scar tissue. Some spaces were filled with
glowing dust, through which they glided, the SLAM Cruiser’s jets retracting and
engines silencing to avoid risk of explosion... then on, they moved, ever on
and subtly
down.

Suddenly, the SLAM Cruiser tilted
and dropped vertically. The occupants were slammed back in seats. Mel growled
long and low, jaw making cracking crunching sounds as she, apparently, chewed
her own teeth. She seemed distraught. Unhappy.

As they fell, Keenan nudged
Franco and gestured to the portal. Franco peered out. They dropped, following a
flowing smooth black tunnel towards the bowels beneath The City... and there,
running parallel with their descent, was the same thick silvery umbilical they
had witnessed from outside the Black Rose Citadel HQ.

“That lead up to the SPIRAL dock?”
said Keenan.

“The Line? Yes. SPIRAL port
technology is incredibly complex; if not meticulously controlled then it becomes
a danger to us all. We are dropping through a hermetically sealed environment.
Freefall.”

“The GreenSource Mainframe
controls all this?”

“Yes.” Oz locked his gaze to
Keenan. “And
so much
more, my little cooperative Combat K man.”

Keenan was just about to speak,
but the SLAM Cruiser slowed with rapid deceleration, dunk-engines whining, as
they slipped through sealant-envelopes.

And there, below them, spread the
GreenSource Mainframe.

At first glance it appeared to be
a giant series of towers built from crystals of deep, rich green. The base was
perhaps fifty metres across, and rose in jagged leaps, ragged steps, to a
single inch-wide pinnacle which connected, via a narrow circular platform, to
the Line leading straight up to the distant SPIRAL dock. NanoTek’s express
elevator to the
stars.

The SLAM Cruiser decelerated
further, and banked, and Keenan saw the Mainframe stood on an island of rough
volcanic rock; to all sides there was a moat of nothingness, a desperate fall
veering away and inducing instant vertigo. Deep, deep down the circular well
could be seen the glow of magma, which broiled and churned in restless agony.

The SLAM Cruiser banked again,
then levelled, and touched down on the platform at the tower’s base with a
metallic compress of suspension. The ramp fizzed, and Oz was the first one off
the vehicle, watching as GKs prodded Keenan, Franco, Pippa and Mel from their
cosy intimacy in the narrow hold.

They clumped down the ramp, to
stand on uneven volcanic rock. All gazed up at the sheer magnificence of the
rearing green towers, topped with that silvery, spidery strand of Line. And
yet— yet something
strange
filtered into Keenan’s mind. The image was
wrong, somehow disjointed, as if the GreenSource Mainframe didn’t quite inhabit
the same time frame. It seemed to jerk, and jump, in infinitesimally small
steps and he turned to the others. “Do you see it?”

“See what?” barked Franco.

“The tower. Stuttering, like a
badly copied vid.”

Franco stared hard at Keenan. “I
think it’s
you
who needs a pill, good buddy.”

“Have you noticed the
colour?”
said Pippa, voice low.

“What about it?”

“When we visited Ket, and broke
into the Inner Sanctum of The Metal Palace; we found Emerald, yes, but she
seemed to be linked to a gem. Remember? Franco wanted to steal it. The tower
looks like, hell, it
is
the same sort of thing. The same... mineral.”

Combat K observed the GreenSource
Mainframe.

And felt, eerily, that it
observed them back.

“You must enter the portal,” said
Oz, moving up close behind Keenan. Keenan glanced back, saw the poison dripping
from Nyx’s fangs, the steady hold on the yukana, and he glanced around at the
other GKs with weapons trained on the unarmed and helpless Combat K soldiers.
The unwilling unit reformed.

“I kind of felt you were going to
say that.”

“There.” Oz pointed. There was a
circular orifice, at floor level. Keenan nodded, and moved towards the organic
lips. He turned, made eye contact with Franco, then with Pippa.

“I have a feeling this is where I
discover the truth,” said Keenan.

“Grwl,” said Mel.

“What did she say?”

“She said that sometimes the
truth is best left dead,” translated Franco.

Keenan stared hard at the ginger
squaddie. “You got
all that
from one growl?” Franco started to moan an
explanation, but Keenan held up a hand, and rubbed at his temple as his
headache returned to pound him. But this time, unlike during previous
occurrences, it came flooding into his skull with a vengeance, washing over
him, down through his entire being like a raw riot of fire. Keenan paled, and
felt like he could vomit. “It’s OK,” he managed to say, through pulsing waves
of sickening nausea. “OK, Franco. Stop!”

“Good luck.” Pippa’s voice was
low.

“I thought you were trying to
kill us? With those bastard...
things.
What changed?” Keenan was
breathing deeply, laboured, obviously suffering agony.

“I...” Pippa shook her head.
Looked at the ground. “Shit. It doesn’t matter.”

“She trusted Oz,” said Franco. “But
he stuffed her. Ain’t that right, girl? At least with us you know Uncle Franco
will look after you.” He leered at her bosom.

“That’s what worries me.”

Brittle.

Chatter.

Insect chatter.

All wrong. All wrong.

Broken glass. Cracked crystal.
Shards, piercing, brain.

Humans.

Feeble humans.

Come to me.

Keenan.

Come to me.

Keenan turned, head pounding, and
pushed forward into the GreenSource Mainframe.

In silence, the machine accepted
him.

~ * ~

I
mean you
no
harm. Relax. Come further in, deeper in, there will be no pain I promise.

Keenan pushed on, as if through a
thick shock-gel. It encompassed him, filled his mouth and nose and ears and
anus, pressing into him, flowing into him, exploring him without his consent, a
liquid, machine rape. And then, as if suspended in fluid, Keenan floated
upwards through layers of green— dark and sombre at the base, then up through
gradual lightening shades until he hung, suspended, arms outstretched near a
central light source.

He kicked around, idly, swimming
in streams of ichor, turning over and rolling and soon losing himself, wondering
which way was down. It no longer seemed to matter. Keenan laughed like an
idiot. Giggled like a child.

Welcome.

“You wanted to see me?”

Yes. And you require my services.

You need me...

The voice was definitely female,
yet deep and powerful, almost a song. It filled Keenan with instant liking,
instant calm; like a trusted mother-figure, a strong maternal embrace which
took him back and back drifting down decades to the long, echoing, cosy months
in the womb. He was a babe again, cherished and nurtured, fed and loved; and he
sank, shamelessly, into the enveloping loving warmth, into this secure and
total environment.

And I need you. Your help.

“You need my help?” Idle
surprise. “You’re the most powerful machine ever created. What could
I
possibly
offer you?”

Not just you, Zak, but Combat K.
You are special, all three. Your talents lie... beyond that of simple mortals.
You are soldiers, yes, and twisted, yes... but you have been to places, seen
things no mortal should ever witness. After Emerald, and the K Jump, you
cruised the twisted millennia of space. You were changed by that, Zak. You were
shifted.

“Only my mother called me Zak.”

I am your mother, and your lover,
I am a total part of your chemical now. I am inside you. Like Emerald was
inside you. And I can see the channels she carved; I can see the route to the
Dark Flame... that element which so upsets the Seed Hunters.

“What do you know of Seed
Hunters?”

You are in their prophecies. The
Dark Flame will destroy them. That is all I know.

“You are being helpful. But
nothing is ever given freely. What do you want with Combat K?”

I
want Combat K to work with
Oz, and Stein-hauer. We are building an army, Zak Keenan. Constructing a
warhost from the deviant twisted morally corrupt individuals who inhabit this
decadent place; the biomods have done their job, turned human and alien forms
into powerful soldiers who are learning to fight, learning to kill. Honing
their skills upon one another. Weeding out the weak breeds from the strong.
When the biomods changed them, it deformed them physically, making them
stronger, more immune to disease and biological and chemical warfare. But they
are as children again; they must grow, must be nurtured. Combat K can help us
do this. Combat K can help to train the deviants. Combat K can control the
zombie host.