Quake (33 page)

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 world!’ 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.

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

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

The TV sparkled into life with a digital buzz of electro-hum, diamond-sharp images spinning and morphing into the jewelled liquid logo of Leviathan Fuels.

Leviathan Fuels are proud to announce their recent acquisition of important contracts ... not only are most global emergency services signed up to have vehicles converted to LVA, but 78% of military contracts have been acquired worldwide - this gives LF a dominant share of the world fuel market and they thank you all!

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-*

Scene folds into cube/spins around a digital representation of the Earth and then fades into—>
An entourage of fire engine, police squad car and emergency ambulance, all cruising the tarmac in an unspecified country and sweeping majestically around curves -
be smart, the whole world is converting to LVA and you don’t want to get left behind in the dirt...

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 ...

-
Four hundred miles to the gallon! Go on, make the smart choice ... choose Leviathan Fuels, your children deserve a better future ...

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:

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SCENE DISSOLVES TO BLUE

SIU Transcript

CLASSIFIED SR19/1178/SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

Hacked ECube interception

Date: September 2XXX

Our breaking headline for this evening is the assassination of the President of Leviathan Fuels, Chanya Verisimilov, who was gunned down today at 3pm on the marble steps leading to the Central Leviathan HQ in Prague, Eastern Europe.

Four men wearing balaclavas and bearing assault JK53s opened fire without warning from a truck, killing Verisimilov and three bodyguards instantly and severely wounding many reporters and paparazzi who were standing nearby taking statements and photographs.

Special Forces were immediately deployed and cut off the truck’s escape route. Despite some eyewitness accounts of the men surrendering and holding their hands in the air, all the assassins were accidentally shot in the forehead at point-blank range and have therefore been unable to comment.