Toxicity (10 page)

“We good?”

“Yeah.”

They drew silenced Sig72 pistols
and moved towards a blank metal door, checking behind them, then towards the
perimeter sirens and emergency lights they knew were awaiting them. They’d seen
the wiring diagrams.

“Can you talk?” came Zanzibar
over the net.

“Yes. Be quick.”

“There’s something wrong.”

A cool chill blew over Jenny’s
soul.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” Zanzibar’s voice
was low, slow, controlled, but something had twitched him. Jenny cursed. “Let’s
call it a hunch. Some tiny element is out of place. Out of alignment. I feel
like we’re being watched. Set up. How is it there?”

“All good,” said Jenny. “Go with
your instincts, Zanz. If you want to withdraw, withdraw. Even one hit on this
shit-hole will send a middle-finger message to the bastards at Greenstar. We
don’t need the double-det.” But inside, she was seething. Cold and annoyed.
They both knew the double detonation would have a much larger impact.

“No. I’m good, Jen. Jumping at
shadows. Will keep you updated.”

“Good lad.”

Jenny signalled Sick Note, who
took out the lock using a tiny sliver of what looked like silver, but was in
fact a controllable fluid pick. It took him half a minute, and then he opened
the blank metal door and they slid inside.

They were in.

~ * ~

A
COOL DARKNESS greeted Jenny, along with an undercurrent of stench that made her
flinch. Living on the planet of Toxicity, the constant aroma of rotting crap
was ever-present. For all who lived there, all those who called it home,
olfactory senses became eventually dulled, and from childhood to adulthood, as
Greenstar gradually wasted the planet of her kin, Jenny had come to see this
gradual stripping of her senses as a sensory theft. Olfactory rape and murder.
Another reason to curse Greenstar. Another reason to hate The Company.

But this.
This
was real
bad.

Even Sick Note coughed, grip
tightening on his Sig72.

Jenny signalled, and they moved
down a narrow corridor. Through the walls, the thumping and grinding was louder
now; more harsh. Like bricks in a grinder. It set Jen’s teeth on edge, like a
steel claw being dragged across a blackboard, and she fought to control
herself. Focus. Job in hand. Plant charges.

Swiftly, they moved through the
gloom of the Reprocessing Plant. Reaching several camera points they followed
the same slick routine: Jenny would halt, Sick Note would come forward, and
release his tiny silver worm, which would crawl its way up the wall, enter the
camera and destroy its internal digital structure. One by one the cameras were
shut down, and Sick Note grinned his sick grin. “No challenge for this
technological master,” he muttered, and winked at Jen. She patted his arm and
they continued through the gloom.

Randy had been right. Skeleton
night staff. But then, that’s what they’d expected. What they’d seen during the
days and weeks of monitoring. The Greenstar Company were methodical and
predictable, if nothing else.

They reached a large chamber
filled with bubbling vats of blue tox. They paused for a while, surveying the
area, watching, waiting. A worker passed to their right and they let him go,
hearts hard. They didn’t want to kill people. But if they had to, they had to.
These people were torturing the planet. These people were killing Jenny’s
world...

“Look at the stars, little lady.
Look how they sparkle! How they light up the night sky!”

She stood with Old Tom, her dad,
her father, her love, her hero, the Biggest Man in the World, the Greatest Man
in the Galaxy, on top of the hill. Ice was under their boots, a wind snapping
at them like wolf jaws; but she was snuggled and warm inside her fleece and
hats and scarf and gloves and boots... and snuggled up to him, with his huge
arm around her shoulders, holding her tight, protecting her. But more, she was
warm inside. Warm like honey. Warm like angels. She was with her dad. And his
love and strength were bright, real things.

“Aren’t they tiny?” she said.

“No, they are massive, so big
they would swallow our whole world if they wanted to.”

“Wow. Is that true, daddy? Really
true?”

“As true as their beauty. Look
out, Jenny. Look out on our planet, our world, our incredible, fabulous planet.
Amaranth. Deep in the heart of the Zynaps System. Wonderful, and fabulous, a
million years of history deep under our very boots.”

“It’s so beautiful, daddy. I love
the world. And I love you.”

He gazed down into her big baby
blue eyes, and ruffled her hair through her thick bobble hat. “I love you too,
munchkin. Love you till the stars go out.”

A month later, Greenstar bought
the planet and signed the paperwork. The Company made their signed-in-blood
agreements with corrupt Quad-Gal politicians, and the Titan-Class Space
Freighters moved in. Orbiting Dump Pipes were set in place; vast, armoured,
mech-laser-protected itanio tubes which freighters could lock to above orbit
and dump trillions of litres of crap to the surface through without having to
land. Of course, the global population of Amaranth were offered generous
payouts to pack up and ship out. Whole villages and towns, even cities, were
abandoned overnight. Bus Shuttles shuttled millions from the condemned planet’s
surface. But, as was human nature, millions more
chose
to stay. This was
their planet. Their world. Their home. Their history. Their
soul.

Old Tom chose to stay. Three
months later, his wife, Jenny’s mother, had died from a rare allergic reaction
to some of the new pollutants introduced to Amaranth - now being commonly
touted by the media as
Toxic City,
or simply
Toxicity.
Oh, how
The
Daily Shite
mocked and harangued those people who chose to stay. Funny
cartoons depicted the remaining populace growing three heads and extra legs,
and spouting comedy penis growths and jocular new diseases. They laughed and
laughed and laughed. The day of Jenny’s mother’s funeral, Old Tom started to
drink
real bad.
And he never stopped.

The Daily Shite ran comedy
sketches, columns, cartoons and features... right up to the day when Jenny and
three newly recruited Impurity Movement activists had bombed their HQ on Earth.
That had been the beginning...

And although Jenny knew it was
wrong; well, fuck it. It was also
right.

Jenny and Sick Note waited until
the worker left the chamber. They moved across the big space, slowly,
confidently, in control. Their target was close, now. One of the main
Reprocessing Decks that also formed a structural connection point for the whole
plant. The Plant had four, one in each corner; foundation stones holding up the
roof and the towers. Blow the Decks, where the toxic crap was supposedly “reprocessed,”
and the whole factory would come tumbling down upon itself...

As they drew near, Jenny stopped.
“Listen.”

“I don’t hear anything,” said
Sick Note.

“Exactly. The Reprocessing Decks
should be running 24/7. They’re not even operating. Which is incredible, seeing
as a hundred Super Tankers have just supposedly dumped their loads here for
reprocessing.”

“Jen,” said Sick Note, softly. “You
don’t need to convince me. I’m on your side.”

She gave him a dark look. “Sometimes,
I think they think I’m mad,” she said.

Sick Note touched her arm,
tenderly for such a skinny little psychopathic madman. “Not me,” he said.

Zanzibar came through on the net.
“You copy?”

“Yeah. We’re on target. You?”

“In position. The convoy is
eleven minutes away; we’ll hit it with so many bombs they’ll think it’s fucking
Detonation Day!”

“Roger that. Will connect. Out.”

“We on?” said Sick Note.

“We’re on,” said Jenny, and
pulled a small, brown charge from her pack. “Let’s do it.”

They moved towards the massive
Deck, which squatted in the gloom like a warship tipped on its nose. It veered
off, upwards, a curiously angled skyscraper. Sick Note looked around, not
nervous, but manically cautious. His weapon tracked different arcs. If they
were spotted now, they were fucked.

Jenny knelt, and slowly spun out
thin loops of gold wire. There was a
clack
as the charge connected with
the metal, and tiny teeth chewed their rapid way into the alloy surface.

Satisfied, Jenny rocked back on
her heels and glanced up at Sick Note. “We good?”

“We’re good,” he said.

Suddenly, both Jenny and Sick
Note’s comms burst into life. There was rattling gunfire and explosions. The
pitter-patter of falling debris. “It’s a set-up!” screamed Zanzibar. There came
several
krumps.
“They were fucking waiting for us! Get out! Get out now!”

The comm went dead.

Jenny felt her heart drop into
darkness. Hackles rose on the back of her neck and across her arms. Her jaw
clamped tight, and she gave a sideways glance at Sick Note. “Come on. Let’s
finish it.”

“But...”

“We’ve gone too far. We fucking
finish it.”

They ran through the gloom,
unchallenged, heads low, SMKKs at the ready. Sick Note watched Jenny powering
forward, a woman possessed, and made sure they weren’t followed. Or watched. He
grinned manically. Hell, how would they even
know?
This place could be
rigged tighter than any high security bank. Just because it looked scummy from
the outside, what was basically a glorified
tip,
didn’t mean they didn’t
have access to all manner of high-grade observation technology. They could
afford it.

They reached the second Deck in
just under four minutes, and Sick Note was streaming with sweat, wheezing, and
wondering if it was time to finally give up the weed. Annoyingly, Jenny was not
even out of breath. She knelt, priming the charge, as Sick Note tried to raise
Zanzibar, Meat Cleaver, Bull or Nanny on their comms; nothing. They were either
down and out of the game, or their tech had been compromised.

“Shit.”

“Nothing?”

“No. Let’s get the shit out of
here, Jen. This is turning real sour and I don’t trust this place.”

“Let’s go.”

They made their exit with care,
and it was with incredible relief they ran to the fence and their rendezvous
with Randy and Flizz. The two hadn’t yet arrived, and Jenny waited impatiently,
crouched by the wire, eyes focused on the direction from which she thought they
would emerge. A cold wind blew across her, and it felt strange; like somebody
crawling over her grave. Amazing, as she wasn’t dead yet. Not yet.

“Still can’t raise Zanzibar. What
do you think is going down?”

“Bad shit. Zanzibar wouldn’t have
cut in on our mission like that for fun. It sounded like an all-out warzone.”

“They’re here.”

Jenny glanced left, a tiny frown
creasing her pale skin. Randy had emerged from a narrow alleyway, looked left
and right, then cautiously approached in a crouched run. “Shit, did you hear
Zanzibar on the comm?” he hissed, dropping to his knees before Jen.

“Where’s Flizz?”

Randy stared at Jenny. “She’s just
finishing up. Laying spool decoy, or something. Don’t panic. Have you got the
det?”

“Yes,” said Jen, showing him her
left hand where the digital detonator squatted like an oval bug.