Biohell (53 page)

They trooped after Cam, Franco
muttering in annoyance and hoisting heavy Kekras in gloved fists ready for any
contact. He noticed Xakus starting to fall behind, and turning, dropped back to
walk beside the ageing professor.

“You’re doing well, old man.”

Xakus smiled a weak smile, face
ashen, eyes dulled. “This quest is taking its toll on me. I am not a soldier,
Mr Haggis. I am not a warrior, not a fighter.”

“But you built MICHELLE.”

“She was not, primarily, designed
for war, although I acknowledge it could look that way. I built her out of
love, Mr Haggis. Love. But I find, worryingly, in this day and age one has to
be able to protect oneself. Sadly, MICHELLE could not even do that.”

“She died for a noble cause,”
said Franco.

“What? Discovering the root of
this deviant problem? Helping to translate the junk’s SinScript? No, I don’t
think so. You people, you could never understand MICHELLE. To you she was just
some faceless, stony, emotionless terminator machine. But to me... I could see
inside her, see the beauty within the mesh, the love within the shell.” He
stuttered to a halt, overcome by emotion.

They were walking down a narrow,
roofed tunnel created from derelict buildings, their pace slow, wary,
observant. The warzone had mutated. Ahead, Keenan halted and crouched beside a
tangle of sharpwire, gun to his cheek, eyes roving, picking out every tiny
detail. Like a machine he missed nothing. This was his environment. His world.
Whether he acknowledged it, or not.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said
Franco.

Xakus turned tortured eyes on
him. “Oh but it was. I gave her life. And because of me, that life was taken. I
killed her, Mr Haggis. I killed my true love as sure as putting a gun to her
head and pulling the trigger.”

Shit, thought Franco, rolling his
eyes. And they think I’m mad!

Keenan turned, staring at Franco.
“Seems we’ve a long way to go to find Mel. This is no simple infil.”

Franco crouched, looking out
across a field of sharpwire, towards—

“Wow,” he said, and he meant it.

The Hammer Syndicate HQ rose for
three hundred storeys, its matt-black, rippling, undulating edifice like
nothing the Combat K men had ever witnessed.

“That’s not a building, it’s a
bloody dildo!” snapped Franco.

“More importantly, how do we get
in?” Keenan searched his friend’s face.

“More importantly, do we
want
to
get in?”

Keenan hissed, “She’s your
missus, mate. If you want to rescue her, you have to get inside that damn
place. You work it out.”

“How the buggering bugger am I
supposed to do that?”

“That’s where I come in,” said
Xakus, crouching beside them. He seemed suddenly infused with energy. His eyes
had grown bright after their previous dullness; his face was ruddy, as if
excitement coursed his veins. “This is an organotower.”

“An orgasm
what?”
said
Franco.

“No. A tower, formed of living
semi-sentient over-stretched molecules. It’s like a giant vegetable.”

Franco stared at Xakus with
incredulity. With care, he finally said, “Is that the best the bloody Hammer
Syndicate could afford?”

“You don’t understand. I’m not
talking carrots and potatoes here; it’s an organic material from the Triclux
System; an alien, if you will. It has incredible resistant armoured properties,
and the benefit of being self-rejuvenating.”

“So a building that heals itself,”
muttered Keenan.

“Yes.”

“But,” persisted Franco, “ultimately,
it’s an alien vegetable. Right?”

“Yes.”

“How come I’ve never heard of it?
I’ve walked these mean city streets for years. I mean, a vegetable dildo, the
size of a tower block! I’d have noticed! It’s, um, something that would have
caught my attention, I’m sure.”

“This unit is very rare, very
expensive, and the Hammer Syndicate don’t advertise its uniqueness. You note
the surrounding sharpwire of No Man’s Land? The whole structure lies under a
shimfield. Move a few metres away, you won’t see it due to visual pressure
waves.”

“It’s still a damn comedy
vegetable,” said Franco. “Can’t we just take a peeler to it? Flush the bastards
out that way?”

“I think you’ll find it’s a
little
more complex,” said Xakus. “Cam, can you clear us a path through the
sharpwire?”

“It will take but a few moments,”
said Cam. He sounded smug. “After all, I have a new-found advanced military
status. I am, in fact...”

“Get on with it, gonad,” snapped
Franco.

“Your rudeness has reached cosmic
proportions.”

Cam eased ahead, spinning slowly,
scanning, clicking. Then, low to the ground, he shot towards the organic wire
and there was a soft
snap.
Coils sprang up, encompassing Cam for a
moment. At the core, Cam
glowed,
a miniature sun, a mobile fusion
reactor, and the sharpwire melted into molten droplets. Cam sped on, wire leaping
up around him as he cleared them a path through the highly dangerous toxic
deterrent.

“Ain’t nothing organic getting
through that,” said Franco, in a grim and horrified awe.

“Reminds me of that thing we met.
In the bunker on Terminus5. The Tangled.” Keenan’s eyes were hooded,
unreadable.

“A similar technology,” said
Xakus, standing and heading out after Cam. His boots crackled on crisped
strands of
dead
sharpwire. “Only this is more benign. It has no advanced
AI elements like a coil of Tangled.”

“You know your stuff,” said
Keenan.

“I used to work for NanoTek,”
said Xakus. “I did my bit of synthetic intelligence programming, bio-molecular
engineering and artificial cell structuring. I know my control theory from my
probability; my fuzzy systems from my hybrid neuroscience.” He smiled a bitter
smile. “You could say I’m something of an expert. That’s why you brought the
SinScript to me. That’s why we’re going to decode the son of a bitch up there.”

“They have the technology?”

“There is a likelihood,” said
Xakus. “Hammer has always had a close relationship with NanoTek. They scratch
one another’s scabby backs, if you get my meaning.”

“But this
is
an amoral
syndicate, right?” said Franco. “I presume their relationship is financial?”

“Isn’t every relationship?” said
Xakus. “There is also the option that Hammer Syndicate are in on the biomod
hacking business. The pirates and the coders, hey? They’d need serious
bank-rolling to undercut NanoTek. And yes, NanoTek would like us to think it
was some backstreet small-scale operation, some bedroom genius, because that
way less people would trust the hacked biomods. Well, let me tell you, a biomod
takes a lot of cracking. That could also be one reason why these people have
taken Melanie. There’s something different about her zombification. Something
unique. Maybe their hackers want to examine her nanobots? Maybe Hammer
Syndicate is on the brink of
war
with NanoTek.”

“An interesting concept,” said
Keenan, voice cool. “Which would mean the Syndicate are stabbing NanoTek in the
back, and using NanoTek’s money to finance a planned coup d’État?” He scratched
his chin in thought. Then grinned. “I love it when the big boys play rough. Let’s
hope you’re right.”

Cam, dripping hot runs of melted
sharpwire, had reached a safe spot across the No Man’s Land leading to the
organotower. Keenan and Franco, running low and with weapons ready, set off
across rough ground; a few steps behind, still wary of the destroyed biological
menace, Xakus followed.

They stopped at the base of the
tower. Cam positively
glowed
with pride.

“I bet they know we’re here,”
said Franco, one Kekra against his cheek, his eyes scanning the seemingly
deserted ground before him. Distantly, seen through a haze of debris and
darkness and barricades, deviated humans patrolled with an almost clockwork
rhythm.

“I guarantee it,” growled Keenan.
“After all, it was a polite invite.” He took free his cigarette case, took a
moment to roll some Widow Maker, then lit the bedraggled cigarette, breathing
deep on fresh pollutant.

“Isn’t this an inopportune moment
for a smoke?” suggested Xakus, glancing up the sheer wall of the tower which
rose, undulating, above them. Something was happening above. Slick orifices
were beginning to open high up on the vegetative walls; Franco pulled a face of
pure disgust.

“I’m facing the possibility of
extinction,” said Keenan. His face was grim, now. Set. “I can’t think of a
better time for a smoke.”

“How do we get in?” said Franco,
eyeing the puckering orifices high up the slick oily wall. They were making
tiny slurping, kissing sounds.

“You’re not going to like it.”

Franco eyed Xakus, his face
narrowing. “No more damn arse pipes, I hope.”

“Not... exactly,” whispered
Xakus.

The orifices above suddenly
disgorged huge, tuber-like limbs which thumped down with terrific force on the
ground the group had recently crossed. They were long, slick, black, gleaming,
narrow-stemmed appendages ending in flared, pulsing snouts, raw pink and
sphincter-like in appearance. The limbs emerged with a sudden bursting energy,
three, five, ten of them, flailing out above the group in apparent randomness
like some panic-stricken octopus, before flopping through the air and slamming
down against the earth with heavy, sodden booms.

Franco, covering his head,
screeched, “What the hell’s going on?”

“Cam destroyed the sharpwire. He’s
triggered the organotower’s natural vegetative defence mechanism.”

A limb flailed past, a breeze of
proximity causing Franco’s beard to ruffle. He scowled, aware he was within inches
of having his head knocked clean off. “You call that a defence mechanism?”

“Looks pretty good to me,”
snarled Keenan. He turned to Xakus. “We climbing inside one?”

“You catch on fast,” said Xakus.

“Hey, hang on a minute!” said
Franco, “I ain’t climbing up no more tubes, pipes, snouts or anal passageways.
Are we clear on that? A man can only take so much anal abusage.”

“Well stay here then, and let Mel
suffer.”

Keenan, with head low but eyes
lifted, eased forward. Above, the limbs flailed. Xakus joined him, and pointed
to where one swinging, flailing limb emerged from a puckering, sphincter mouth
in the tower wall. “You see the bulge, high up? It’s a nerve centre. Put a
bullet in there and it’ll be paralysed for a few moments. Enough time for us to
climb in, I think. The limbs are hollow.”

Keenan nodded and sighted down
the MPK. A single shot cracked, and the limb fell to earth with a dull
thud.
Keenan bared his teeth, staring at the quivering, twitching mass of pink
lips; it looked like an electrocuted vagina.

“After you, Professor.”

Xakus crawled with care to the
stunned vegetable flesh, and with slurps and squelches, eased back layers of
what appeared to be human skin. Franco shivered, close beside Keenan.

“A man shouldn’t have to go
through this.”

“What?”

“All this crawling around in
tubes and stuff. A man has his dignity, y’know?”

“I thought you lost all
your
dignity
back in the whorehouses, the bars and the prisons?”