Biohell (70 page)

“Be my guest,” said Steinhauer,
and handed her a black Makarov. Pippa stared down at the grease-gleaming 9mm
weapon in her steady hand. “Kill yourself.”

Hush descended. Pippa’s arm
snapped up, gun levelled at Steinhauer. He grinned, and it was a grin too full
of base understanding to be ignored.

“I should add.” His voice was
little more than a whisper. “I, also, am immune. As are all QGM Commanding
Officers. After all.” He coughed. “We wouldn’t like our little war machine to
suffer the embarrassment of a mutiny. Would we?”

“So they’ve trapped us?” snapped
Franco, glaring around. “We work together, or die together?”

“Neat, isn’t it?” drawled
Steinhauer.

“I should have known not to trust
the army!” said Franco.

“And you would have been right.”

“What the bugger
are
spinal
logic cubes?”

“AI detonation charges,” growled
Keenan. “Small, but powerful enough to blow you apart. When did you do it,
Steinhauer? When did you infect my spine?”

“You were the easy one,” said
Steinhauer. “The junks had poisoned you. You needed an antidote. We slipped you
the logic cubes when you were out cold.”

“And me?” said Pippa, eyes
chilled, grey, hard.

“During entry to NanoTek. Your
medical. Your...” he smiled, “jabs.”

“Hah, but I was the most
difficult, yeah?” snapped Franco, eyes gleaming. “You not fool old Franco
without a fuss!”

“On the contrary,” said
Steinhauer. “We got you when you were drunk and lying in the gutter. It took no
great feat of imagination. And that was why you once more had to prove your
mettle by crossing The City in its state of emergency; only... we assumed you
would stop at Voloshko and The Hammer Syndicate. We didn’t think you’d get this
far.”

Keenan released a slow,
calculating breath. He turned to Oz. Smiled a weak smile. “This was all your
plan?”

“No. I am simply a pawn of
NanoTek Corporation. We make weapons and biomods. It’s that simple.”

“And what about the biomods
rioting through the population?”

“An unfortunate accident.”

“Bullshit.”

Oz shrugged. “You always look for
the complex, Mr Z. Keenan, when the basics are staring you in the face.”

“What about the warehouse?”

“What warehouse?”

“The vault. Where you store your
army of controlled zombies. You going to tell me that’s an unfortunate
accident, as well? You people, so arrogant, elevated to God by Power and
staring down your narrow little noses at reality. This stinks, Oz. NanoTek
stinks, Quad-Gal Military stinks, the whole fucking game is corrupt like a
bloated corpse. And I, for one, am no longer play-ing.”

“Then you will die.”

Keenan shrugged. “We all die.
Some of us had incentives removed a long time ago.”

“Well, let me tempt you.”

“How?”

“The GreenSource Mainframe. It...
she...
is the most powerful computer ever created. She is NanoTek’s
seventh wonder of the Quad-Gal. And she has news for you, Keenan.”

“Oh yeah? You gonna tell me I’ve
a long lost twin? Or maybe you’re my fucking father? Wait, let me guess, me,
Franco and Pippa are all triplets separated at birth, and we’ve come into a
fabulous inheritance and only if I step into the GreenSource Mainframe do I
qualify for a GOV funded pension when I shuffle off my mortal titanium-coil.”

Silence descended. Still, fine
rain fell. The sky had darkened. The three GKs moved, uneasily, swaying,
organically shifting, as if waiting for an order to... kill?

“The GreenSource. It is
predictive. It can tell you about your family. About their killer.”

“Right. Sure mate. Like I haven’t
heard
that one
before.”

“Pippa didn’t kill your family.
At least, not in the way that you think.”

The snarl froze on Keenan’s face.
Then he relaxed, eyes glazing into contempt. “You’re too late, pal. She already
told me. Already spilled her guts into an unholy stinking heap. Pippa was
released from prison days before me. She went to my home in a fit of jealousy,
and murdered my wife and children. Not you, not any GreenSource Motherfucker,
none of you can change that.”

“Ask her,” said Oz.

Keenan laughed, glanced at Pippa.
She was shaking.

“Well, bitch?”

“I... don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? Hell girl, I’d
sure remember sticking a pair of scissors into a child’s eye. Try thinking
harder.
Actually, don’t bother. Here, pass me the Makarov, and I’ll end all our
damn suffering right now. I’ve nothing to lose, and I will not be a pawn of QGM
or
fucking NanoTek.”

“Hey guys! Wait!” snapped Franco.
“Wait a goddamn stinking minute!
I
don’t want to die. You two can slot
each other if you want, OK, great and dandy, but don’t be bloody taking me out
with you! I’m an innocent victim in all of this! I’m not part of your sordid
little argument. I don’t deserve to die! I’ve got... so much more to give!”

Pippa stood, smoothed down her
black uniform. Then she moved to Keenan, and looked up into his face. “When I
was arrested, they found me unconscious in a back alleyway. They took me to the
Urban Force Station; sat me down, pumped me with narcotics and coffee. They
showed me the footage taken from Freya’s apartment... it was,
horrible.
Unholy.
Evil. And I watched myself stalk through that house, killing, killing,
killing...” She covered her face, cheeks streaked with tears. Then she moved
her hands. Looked up. Her eyes were dark smudges. “But I don’t remember any of
it, Keenan. I swear. The psychologists pronounced I was traumatised and
suffering short-term memory loss due to the... murders. But I do not, truly,
remember. All I know is I woke in that alley covered in the blood of your
children.”

Oz stepped between them. “GreenSource
can give you the
truth.
”

Keenan chewed his lip, staring
into Pippa’s cold but beautiful eyes. She reached out, touched his arm. And he
did not pull away. Again, he was picturing her on the beach on Molkrush Fed.
The day their unholy love blossomed...

The pain returned. Keenan’s head
spun, pounding him with hammers.

The world, and reality, seemed suddenly
distant. Viewed through frosted glass.

None of this can be real, he
thought, bitterness eating him.

None of it.

He looked at Pippa. She tilted
her head, staring at him. She was as unreadable as ever. An enigma.

With a howl, a SLAM Cruiser breasted
the castle’s wall and landed a few metres away on cold spurts of hydrogen. Oz
gestured, and the GKs, with bristling guns, escorted and prodded Keenan, Franco
and Pippa onto the bobbing loading ramp, followed by a lumbering, submissive
Mel. Stein-hauer followed, and Oz smiled at Xakus, giving a single nod. “You
did well to bring them here.”

“Thank you. And you are still
good for your promise?”

“We can repair MICHELLE using
every technological advancement available to us. When this scene is played out,
MICHELLE will be collected and delivered to our labs.”

“That’s all I require.”

Dr Oz nodded, and with his face
impassive, turned and boarded the SLAM Cruiser. The ship
roared
and
slammed up into fake atmosphere, rising swiftly through clouds and then
above
the ersatz plaything of the greatest computer genius ever to stalk
Quad-Gal.

On the ground, Xakus watched the
SLAM Cruiser disappear; then shivered under a pepper of light rainfall. He
pondered on the recent journey; MICHELLE, the battles, Keenan and Franco, the
SinScript. He shivered again. Now it was out of his hands. Yes, he had been
loyal and truthful up to the point when MICHELLE had given her biomechanical
life... and it had been that point when NanoTek, with perfect timing, struck.
When Professor Xakus was at his most vulnerable...

Burning just a little with shame
Xakus turned to head back to the stairwell and his disc moored on the
battlements. From there, he would direct engineers to MICHELLE’S location.

Xakus froze.

There, in the archway, stood a
junk. It had blood-red eyes in an oval face. Its skin gleamed, metallic, like
pitted old metal smeared with bad oil. The lip-less mouth opened, a stream of
flowing mercury, and a forked tongue flickered. Xakus realised the junk was
laughing.

Xakus scrabbled at his belt for
his pistol as the junk lifted a long Thump Rifle and a single shot
cracked
across
the cobbles, reverberating hollow from stone. The heavy calibre round entered
Xakus’s forehead, exploding his skull from the back of his head in a million
pieces to rain down, slowly, like fluttering snowflakes. One knee folded, and
Xakus’s body collapsed and leaked a thick red flow between the grooves of
neatly machined ersatz cobbles.

In silence the junk turned,
retreated, and disappeared into a fake and fast-falling darkness.

~ * ~

CHAPTER 15

GREENSOURCE

Cam
froze, sensors screaming. The Sump gurgled. He could smell the stench of his
own burnt-out motors. What am I going to do? he screamed in fast-time binary.
What can a little trapped PopBot like me with three burnt-out motors possibly
do
in this situation when... he gulped in digital... when
surrounded
by
five of the latest and most efficient and deadly prototype NanoTek designed and
manufactured K1LLBots? The best of the best. The elite of the PopBot hierarchy.
Prototype. Awesome. Cam had read the glossy magazine literature whilst waiting
for his upgrades.

Cam watched the K1LLBots as they
circled him in the sludge. They kept wide, scanning him, attempting to decipher
his level of threat. They recognised he had upgrades. K1LLBots were wary;
intelligent. They did not underestimate. But—when they exploded into violence,
Cam knew—they really
went for it.

Help.

Mummy.

Cam wondered if he dared try his
remaining motors, but logic dictated that if seven motors couldn’t extract him
from this mess, then four had absolutely no chance. Zero. Nada.

Bollocks!

Sometimes, often, Cam wished he
hadn’t been fitted with a Profanity Chip. He believed they were crude and
unnecessary, especially in an AI as refined as he. However, on occasions like
this, surrounded by five deadly K1LLBots and trapped limping in the bottom of
an inescapable coolant sump, he was glad he had.

No. He was
fucking
glad he
had.

The K1LLBots buzzed, and started
closing in, circling faster and faster and faster... Cam felt a digital scream
well in his digital throat and he wondered if NanoTek K1LLBots would be
susceptible to bribery or empathy but deep down he knew they would not, and
anyway, really, considering the awesome speed with which they were accelerating
and what was that noise? Oh look all five K1LLBots had just extricated
high-tensile triglium cutting saws which buzzed and whirled amongst the sludge
and, most importantly, were able to cut neatly through a simple Security PopBot’s
outer shell...

Cam knew he had three seconds to
do... something.

Anything!

Fast.