Biohell (77 page)

“Argh!” shouted Franco, as his
eyes fell on the jagged hole in the floor. He ran forward, battered sandals
flapping, and dropped to his knees beside the tangle of mashed alloy. It was
this movement which saved his life.

Nyx’s needle-knuckles slashed the
air millimetres from where his head had been, and Franco rolled fast, axe
sweeping out and knocking Nyx’s legs from under her. The AI rolled, came up,
leapt at Franco—

He lashed out, and the axe
slammed Nyx’s head. She took the blow well, rolled and spun around, then
grinned at him. Poison glinted on fangs.

“You’re already dead,” she said.

“What?” Franco slammed the axe,
which whistled past Nyx’s face.

“I injected a fine toxic
air-mist. Tricklium III. You breathed it in when we wrestled over the axe.”

“Bollocks!”

“Trust me.” Nyx’s metal face was
almost serene. “You have approximately five minutes. It works more slowly in
mist form. Injection is far—more—
effective.”

She leapt, and Franco staggered
back. The axe rapped against Nyx’s shoulder. Sparks leapt, sparkling in Franco’s
panic-filled eyes.

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I? In a few moments
you’ll feel the sickness. It will rage through you, and you’ll vomit your
insides out through your skull hole. That alone will make you beg for death as
your body tries everything it can to eject the poison. I am told it is
excruciating. Then comes paralysis. And, if I choose not to kill you, but
instead watch the drama unfold, you’ll twitch like a rabid epileptic until the
poison crushes your insides for the final minute of your diseased and worthless
life. You
will
suffer. It will be bad. Torturous, even. But then, why
invent a poison which is fun?”

Franco, listening, had been
continually backing away.

Now, he ground his teeth, turned,
and ran...

Nyx’s laughter followed him as he
reached the Line booth. He stopped. The AI wasn’t following. It had turned, and
was trying to locate Keenan. And that could only mean...

Pain jabbed Franco in the belly,
then washed out through him. He gagged, and, as Nyx had explained, sickness
napalmed his system, smashed through him with the ferocity of a powerful
narcotic. He fell to his knees, dropping the fire-axe from shaking, useless
fingers. He vomited on the tiled floor.

Franco heaved and heaved, pain
wracking him, tears blinding him, and he realised his vulnerability and grabbed
the fire-axe, covered in his own vomit, and lifted it shakily to his chest,
casting about, searching for Nyx...

Something rattled across the floor.
Franco tried to focus, then dropped suddenly and covered his head with
sick-stained arms.

Nyx glanced down.

The BABE Grenade explosion picked
the AI up and flung it like a rag-doll across the entire dock lounge. Nyx
connected with a pillar mid-way, folding around it with crunches of compressing
alloy, then veering off at an angle, legs flapping, to hit the far window with
a thud. Nyx slid down the transparent wall in a crumpled heap of alloy.

Keenan ran to Franco, dropping to
his knees and grasping his friend. “What’s wrong?”

“It poisoned me,” gasped Franco,
eyes wide.

“Come on.”

“I’m going to die, Keenan,” he
gasped. “I’ve four minutes left. Shit! And not a babe in sight!”

Keenan nodded, face grim, and
helped Franco stagger to his feet. Swaying like drunk brothers, the two men
tottered to the Line booth, Franco still trailing his axe.

Against the far wall, Nyx
uncurled and stood in a fluid motion. Her eyes met Keenan’s.

“Fucker,” she said.

Keenan dragged Franco into the
booth, and the Line slammed them down as, in a musical harmony, four sets of
High-J, in perfect synchronicity, detonated.

The explosion was louder than
Nuclear.

Louder than War.

And to Keenan’s ears, as they
howled down the Line towards the GreenSource Mainframe far far below NanoTek’s
Black Rose Citadel, the savage detonation of anti-gravitational engines seemed
louder than Death itself...

~ * ~

Fire
and shrapnel raged. Ate. Exploded. Vaporised. Consumed. Engulfed. Heat and fire
savaged through the SPIRAL dock. Engines were smashed and boiled into nothing
in the heart of a screaming radiation-filled fireball. With perfect unity, all
four High-J bombs detonated. All four AGE engines
died.
And the SPIRAL
dock, weighing in at just over a million tonnes, tilted, slowly, one edge going
down in a searing, thousand metre wall of flame which lit The City for a
hundred miles. More secondary explosions rocked the internals of the dock, deep
muffled concussions, but despite their size and ferocity, they were miniscule
in comparison to the might of the dock itself, its sheer titanic
mass.
Listing
now, one end dropping, gravity grabbed the huge station nearly two kilometres
up in the sky and flung it like a rocket towards the world below. Towards
NanoTek. Towards the GreenSource Mainframe... and the miniscule, pathetic,
fragile creatures known as Man.

Across The City, the raging
battles of zombies, SIMs, Slabs, humans, all those still fighting or hiding
from estranged zombie individuals—all paused and stared at the illuminated sky.
Fire raged and broiled in the heavens. Night turned to day. Green light and
white light flashed, side by side, in an apocalyptic firestorm which vaporised
the clouds and the darkness, and for some strange reason, to those who peered
upwards, seemed to herald a new, clean, beginning.

The SPIRAL dock fell, massive and
silent, fire raging behind it like a detonating trail of solar radiation.

Below, The Black Rose Citadel
waited.

NanoTek waited.

And the whole planet seemed to
hold its breath...

~ * ~

Keenan
and Franco rushed downwards, Keenan in grim silence, Franco heaving
occasionally, face gaunt, lips blue and trembling. Far above Keenan
felt
more
than heard or saw the SPIRAL dock begin its rapid descent. And he knew: knew he
should have given them more time, knew he should have given them a larger
window of escape... but that would have meant leaving the High-J susceptible to
Nyx, and God only knew what other agents of the GreenSource Mainframe were on
the prowl. No. This way was best. Even if it meant, ultimately, their own
demise.

Keenan saw Franco begin to
topple, losing his ability to stand, and he grabbed the squaddie’s loose,
flopping arm. “Stay with it, buddy,” he muttered.

Franco said nothing. His eyes had
closed.

Down they slammed, and above them
something
big
was shaking, vibrating, and Keenan peered up and could
see, distantly through the tunnel of the Line, that the whole edifice was
collapsing
and chasing the two men, the two instigators of its annihilation, down
towards their inevitable deaths...

Franco’s eyes snapped over. “We’re
gonna get squashed!” he snapped, voice quavering.

Keenan nodded. “Maybe.”

“You’ll have to leave me.”

“I ain’t leaving anybody.”

“Keenan!” Franco grabbed his
comrade’s War-Suit, and shook him. “I can hardly stand! You can’t help me down
those GreenSource towers. We won’t have enough time!”

“I’ll make the time,” said
Keenan.

Franco laughed. “Stupid fucking
heroics. You’re being the dumb and useless stubborn bastard I always loved. But
listen to me, Keenan, and listen good.” Keenan stared hard at his insane
friend, ironically, in these last few moments leading to his tox-filled death,
more lucid than most supposedly sane men. “Your girls wouldn’t thank you for
your sacrifice.”

“That’s a cheap shot.”

“It’s all I have.”

“I’m not leaving you, Franco. If
we die, we die together.”

Franco said nothing. He passed
into unconsciousness, body trembling as the poison from Nyx spread through his
glands and arteries. His legs began to kick.

Above, a million tonnes of SPIRAL
dock, in accelerating descent, began to roar...

~ * ~

Mel
was dying. Not just from the poison injected by the GK AIs, but from Dr Oz. He
Was wearing her down. Even now she could feel her strength leaving her. A
genetic eight-foot mutation super-soldier she might be, but even one of
those
could only fight for so long. The two grappled, and Oz slammed Mel to the
rock. He stood over her, shirt and glass suit torn in long jagged ribbons, one
shoe lost, his tie tattered confetti. But he was grinning, in triumph, in
superiority, in majesty.

“I made you,” he snarled. Blood
mixed with his saliva. Behind one of his eyes something twitched. “I created
you! I created the biomods! I fucking
own
you!”

He took a deep breath. Mel,
shivering and broken, weak and exhausted, lay there and bled.

Oz lifted his hands above his
head, hands curled into claws. He knew what he must do. He would rip out her
heart. Imbibe her core biomods, absorb them into himself. Then he could shift
their code and she would die, writhing, on the rock. He, however, would become
stronger. A Combined.

Suddenly, Oz heard the sound of
screaming engines, and whirled, too late—straight into the accelerating nose
cone of the SLAM Cruiser. It rammed him at a phenomenal rate, lifting him
grunting from the platform and propelling him across the chamber, across the
abyss, and spreading him across the rock wall. He screamed, a long loud wail as
his body, his flesh, his intestines, spread out in a colourful flat blue platter
and his eyes met Pippa’s calm, cold, grey gaze in the cockpit beyond.

Pippa stared deep into Oz’s
biomod replicated eyes. She increased the pressure of the SLAM, watched his
trapped body writhing and curling, black mist forming and reforming his mashed
bones and broken spine and spread flesh, focused as he squirmed and screamed
and thrashed, pinned against the wall, unable to break free...

“Have a nice day, fucker,” she
said, and hammered the SLAM into reverse. The Cruiser backed up, leaving Dr Oz
spread across the wall, his flesh writhing like albino cobras, then with wide
eyes he tumbled forward and fell, flailing, struggling, into the magma far
below.

Pippa breathed deep. Blood pulsed
down her flank. She blinked, almost passing back into the realm of
unconsciousness. Wearily, she banked the SLAM Cruiser, watched warning sensors
flicker above the console, and her brow contorted in confusion. The readings
told her something near a million tonnes in weight was accelerating towards them
at an incredible speed...

The puzzle clicked into place.

She understood what Keenan had
done.

She sped to the platform, leapt
free, grabbed Mel and helped the huge deviant crawl into the hold trailing
thick arterial gore. Without lifting the ramp, Pippa sprinted, gritting her
teeth, wincing at the warm flood down her own body, and pointed the SLAM’s nose
to the sky, climbing the height of the tower in a few heartbeats and levelling,
ramp touching down as Keenan emerged from the Line booth, reached back, and
pulled a frothing, kicking Franco after him...

Keenan dragged Franco up the
ramp, and his eyes met Pippa’s for the briefest of moments.

“We need to go down,” he growled.

“You do what I think you did?”

“Now!” he snarled.