Biohell (78 page)

Above, the SPIRAL dock connected
with NanoTek HQ. There was thunder, deeper than anything Combat K had ever
experienced. But, rather than slowing the titanic station, NanoTek’s Black Rose
Citadel crumbled like brittle, pulverised sand. NanoTek slowed the SPIRAL dock’s
descent. But it did not halt it.

With crashes and screams, of rock
crushing rock crushing rock, so the SPIRAL dock ploughed downwards with an
incredible, mounting pressure, compressing and crushing everything that stood
in its path, slamming through alloy and steel and titanium and glass and rock,
crushing, compressing, folding, destroying, and Keenan grabbed Franco to stop
him tumbling from the SLAM as Pippa turned the machine’s nose
down
and
they sped towards the broiling, agitated magma...

“Hello!” said a small voice.

“Cam! Where the hell have you
been?”

“I had an altercation with a few K1LLBots.”
The machine, battered, bumped, limping, nevertheless hovered by Keenan’s head. “We
need to move fast; the falling station is compressing everything into a pulp...”

“You don’t fucking say?” snapped
Pippa.

“It’s forcing the magma level to
rise.”

“Will this Cruiser take lava?”

Cam, lights glittering under a
dried husk of black coolant, said, simply, “No.”

“Cam. Franco’s poisoned. Can you
help him?”

“I will try.”

Pippa dropped them, levelling
just above the broiling sea of red. It popped and fizzed, hissing beneath them,
swirling with a glow which burned their eyes.

“There!” pointed Pippa.

“A tunnel.”

“It must be a way out!”

“It can’t be. Or the lava would
take it.”

“Do we have any other option?”

Keenan glanced up. Rocks were
falling from the top of the cavern, many larger than a house. They thundered,
dust and rock tumbling, and the Green-Source Mainframe was shivering, its
flanks rock solid now in an attempt to protect itself...

As Keenan watched, it seemed the
world slammed down through the cavern’s roof. One instant, a shaking,
dust-pouring image. The next, something huge and black appeared and filled his
vision in its entirety.

“Go!” he screamed, and Pippa
powered them into the lava tunnel,. spinning low over rolling magma, banking
left and right with ferocious skill as above and around them the world shook
and Pippa hissed, through gritted teeth.

“We’ll have to go under,” she said,
voice suddenly calm. She closed the ramp. It locked, with a tiny click.

“Cam says the SLAM won’t take it.”

“To hell with Cam. We have no
choice!”

Even as she spoke, waves of lava
boiled up, rolling out, washing over them. Pippa thrust herself back in her
seat, fear etched like acid on her features. Then, reading her scanners, she
nodded, once, and dropped the SLAM Cruiser beneath the molten sea...

Everything descended into a calm,
orange glow.

All noise, all vibration, all
destruction, vanished.

Franco looked up, from where he
lay on the floor. Cam had ejected two thin tubes, and was filtering Franco’s
blood. He stared hard at the little machine.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Dialysis.”

“Die whatastasis?”

“I’m filtering your blood. Lie
still, I don’t want to pump you dry.”

“Hey, no little alloy gonad is
pumping
me
dry!”

“Lie
still,
midget, it’s
hard enough filtering the massive amounts of toxin from your body without you
rolling around like a lunatic.” His voice dropped an octave. “Anyway, there’s
so much shit in your system, its replicating, its an organic semi-synth poison;
sentient. It’s fighting me. Don’t get your hopes up, Franco.”

“Thanks for putting my mind at
ease.” Franco beamed. “Hey! Where’s the noise? We escape? We free? I’m so glad
everything worked out. How long have I been out?”

“About four minutes,” said
Keenan, voice a monotone. He glanced sideways at Pippa.

They both stared at the wisps of
smoke coming from the SLAM’s console.

“What’s that orange glow?”

“Magma.”

“How’s that, then?”

“We’re
under it,”
said
Keenan.

“Is that safe?”

Keenan grinned, a deaths-head
grin. “Hell mate, we’re about to find out.”

“The scanners aren’t working,”
said Pippa, finally. “Everything has shut down. I don’t know which way to go.
All the sensors are burned to shit. It’s just too hot down here, Keenan!”

“This is a SLAM Cruiser, not a
space vehicle,” chastised Cam.

“Just filter his blood,” snapped
Keenan.

“I’m trying my best,” sulked Cam.

“Will you two
stop
arguing!
I’m trying to navigate!”

Silence descended.

They watched, from the SLAM’s
cockpit, as fire raged across the Cruiser’s nose-cone. Gradually, the burning
began to move towards them. It was a worrying sight.

Franco shuffled into one of the
pilot’s seats. “Should it do that?” he asked, face grey with poison.

“I—don’t think so,” said Pippa.

“We’re going to die down here,
aren’t we?” said Franco.

Nobody answered him.

“Pippa?”

“Yeah Franco?” Her gaze was
focused on the scanners, dials and display screens. She glanced up. Looked into
his eyes.

“We’ve probably got a few
minutes,” he said, hopefully.

Pippa stared at him. “You’ve
got
to be joking.”

“Actually, I was deadly serious.”

“You’re not putting your toxic
dick anywhere
near
me, Haggis.”

“Well, it was just a thought.”

Outside, suddenly, everything
went black. There came a
clang.
Sound seemed to return, hissing through
the SLAM Cruiser as metal started ticking, and pinging, and buckling with
crunches of cooling, superheated alloy.

Then, lights illuminated. Bright
magnesium lights.

“What’s going on?” muttered
Pippa.

A voice crackled over the
speakers.

“Hi there!” it said. “Thought you
guys might need a ride.”

It was Knuckles.

“Knuckles!” shouted Franco,
delight swamping his face. “How d’ya get down here, lad?”

“We’ve been tracking you for
days, using the old Combat K channels. But you lost us when you came down into
this shit-heap. None of the scanners would work. We picked you up again when
you dived under the lava... thought you might need a lift.”

“Who’s with you?”

Another voice came over the
speakers. “You sent a little kid and a back-breaking rugby woman to do your
dirty work! Franco Haggis, you should be damned ashamed of yourself!”

“Slick? You old dog!”

“Well, you saved my arse, mate.
It would be rude not to try and return the favour.”

Keenan leant forward. “Can you
get us out of this pit?”

“Sure,” drawled Slick. “But you’ll
have to hang on. We’re in a lava flow; it’s gonna take some powerful thrust.”

“After what we’ve been through,
it’ll be a walk in the park,” muttered Keenan, and slumped back in the pilot’s
chair. He glanced over and grinned at Pippa. “Looks like we made it, girl.”

“We?”

Keenan shook his head, glancing
away. Bitterness flooded him then. Bitterness, and a hatred he knew would
never, ever leave him. How could it?

Pippa had murdered his babes.

~ * ~

The
Class I Marine Frigate burst from a dark, rolling ocean with low-level engines
screaming and trailing spray, steam and falling chunks of volcanic rock. It
banked at a slow speed and hovered for a few moments, blue lights sweeping.

NanoTek’s Black Rose Citadel was
no more. The SPIRAL port collapse had completely crushed it, pushing it down
beneath the rock and earth, caving in the entire island and causing tidal waves
to heave out from the point of impact triggering anti-tidal defence screens to
slam up from abandoned promenades the length and breadth of downtown City
Shores.

Carrying Combat K like a baby in
a womb, only in this case a corrupt and cynical baby high on the adrenaline of
finding itself far from simple in-uterus comforts, the Marine Frigate, huge and
black and angular, banked again, and rose above the smoking, shattered
devastation that was NanoTek’s crushed and pounded HQ.

Keenan, Pippa and Franco stared
down at the city-wide wreckage.

“We sure gave them a sting in the
arse,” said Pippa, voice soft.

Keenan nodded. “I don’t think
NanoTek will forget our names in a hurry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a
fucking mess. It’ll take the engineers months to sort out the wreckage. Years!”

“Ha!” snapped Franco, who was
beginning to look more himself. Colour had flooded back into his cheeks, but
Cam was still working hard hunting down every last trace of poison from the
ginger squaddie’s polluted system. “Nothing that couldn’t be sorted with a
dustpan and brush. Don’t know what you lot are moaning about! My
bedroom
looks
worse than that after a night on the piss!”

“Yes,” said Pippa, head turning
to survey Franco. “But you won’t be doing
that
anymore. Not now you’ve
met Melanie.” She nodded towards the sleeping, injured mutation.

“Ahh. Yeah. Right.” Franco
glanced back, to where Melanie snored off her excessive bout of violence. “Um.
You know before, that little thing I said to you?”

“You mean about wanting to go to
bed with me? Because we were all about to die?”

“Yes.” Franco considered this. “I
think you may have misunderstood my intentions.”

“No no,” said Pippa, watching QGM
Shuttles and Hornets slamming through the skies, roaring high overhead. “I
think I understood you quite clearly.”

Franco’s eyes widened. “Hey,
please don’t tell Melanie!”

Pippa sighed. “Cam. You finished
with his blood yet? Only,” she wriggled, “I think my insides are about to fall
out.”

“Oh my God!” snapped Cam. “You
poor girl!”

“It’s OK, Cam,” said Keenan,
taking Pippa’s hand. “I’ll see to her.”

“You sure?” she said, head
tilting.

Keenan nodded. “I’ll sew you up.
Only, don’t get too friendly. I’ve still got a bullet with your name on it.”

~ * ~

Slick
brought the Marine Frigate down on the towering, abandoned, fifty-lane highway.
All were awake, except for Mel. Cam had worked feverishly on her injuries,
cauterising wounds and bone-welding breaks. Finally, he gave her a massive sedative
and, with Franco holding her claws as her eyes flickered and closed, she fell
into a thankful sleep.