Warhead (58 page)

As the Comanche touched down, a convoy of FukTruks and Land Rovers were waiting, along with perhaps fifty men and women dressed in a mixture of combat clothing and Arab
galabiyya
robes; all wore white shamags. The vehicles were coated in dust and sand, their huge knobbled tyres stained with the dried-blood colour of the local earth.

Casablanca was a hive of activity, which helped with the covert nature of their mission. They were not a combat squad; their goal was a simple and efficient infiltration. They had two local Arab guides, Spiral men who had come highly recommended, and as the group of vehicles drove through the bustling crowds and along the congested dusty roadways leading through Casablanca a constant stream of FukTruks was heading
out
of the city, laden with Nex soldiers and JT8s.

‘It looks suspiciously like the Sentinel Tower is being abandoned,’ said Constanza. She watched several Chinooks taking to the air in the distance. ‘Rats leaving a sinking ship?’

‘Maybe they have some big fish to fry,’ said Sonia. ‘If Carter and Jam and Mongrel are getting their way, then all hell is about to break loose. Maybe they’re being summoned by Durell? Reserves? Back-up?’

‘If the Dreadnoughts are being targeted by Spiral, then it would make sense to redistribute your soldiers. Durell needs the Dreadnoughts to evacuate the Nex from Earth; if they become targets, it could really mess up his plans.’

Sonia smiled. ‘That just makes life easier for us. Let’s put another stick through the spokes of Durell’s progress.’

They trundled through the streets, matching the speed of other traffic so as not to attract attention. Within minutes they were on the dusty road scoured with deep ruts that led towards the Sentinel Tower, which in turn gleamed with reflected rays of sunshine; it looked like any well-built New York tower block—but with one major exception. It was nuke-proof. Built to withstand the terrific onslaught of a nuclear bomb blast...

The FukTruks started to accelerate, picking up speed rapidly as huge engines roared and tyres gripped the dusty tarmac. Sonia turned to one of their guides.

‘I forgot to ask about our infiltration tactics,’ she said.

The man passed her a weapon, a stolen Steyr TMR She checked the magazine as the FukTruk increased its speed again, surging forward. The engine was roaring now, the whole vehicle vibrating madly. Several Nex standing guard by the roadside shouted something and lifted their weapons, but they were left behind in clouds of dust. Guns rattled in the distance.

‘That’s the easy bit,’ said the guide, his eyes glittering. We’re going to ram our way in.’

‘Hit and run?’

‘No. Just hit. We have nowhere to run to.’

Sonia cocked her weapon and watched with increasing horror as yet again the FukTruk powered ahead, huge wheels thundering and pounding against the rutted road. The truck in front was going to hit the Sentinel Tower’s doors first as the primary ram; they would then follow and attempt to mow down any defending Nex under their heavy churning wheels.

‘You ready?’ The guide had to shout over the noise of die screaming engine. Smoke was pluming from under the dented bonnet. If they didn’t connect soon, the whole damned vehicle would blow in a geyser of boiling oil.

‘I’ll never be ready,’ said Sonia J. She turned to Constanza, who had also taken a Steyr sub-machine gun. The dark-haired woman merely smiled, her eyes blazing, her mouth a grim line. You tough little bitch, thought Sonia—

And then the lead FukTruk was smashing through the glass and alloy doors, hammering them backwards as Nex were pulped under heavy thumping wheels and crushed against the Truk’s front bumper.

Sonia’s own vehicle screeched through the hole in me doors. Guns yammered. Sparks glanced along the vehicle’s wing and bonnet, bullets tearing through steel. The Truk teetered, skidding around in the large foyer as behind them other Land Rovers and FukTruks ploughed into the Sentinel Tower, hammering into Nex soldiers. Tyres left red streaks against marble tiles, bumpers slammed against flesh and compressed Nex bodies against walls. Spiral men and women poured from the backs of the vehicles, sub-machine guns blazing. The ensuing firefight was short and very much to the point. It ended with the whole foyer filled with smoke and wailing engines and spreading pools of blood.

‘This way,’ snapped the guide. He held a digital map.

The large group of armed fighters flowed through the building. At each key choke point they locked and barred doors, using industrial nail guns to fix them in place and leaving behind a few heavily armed men.

‘It’ll take the bastards hours to get through,’ said Sonia. ‘Hopefully we won’t need that long.’ She glanced at Constanza. The dark-haired woman’s face was stony. Her eyes, dark and forbidding, were fixed on the task ahead. ‘You OK?’

‘Let’s get this done. I want my life back.’

‘As do we all,’ muttered Sonia.

They padded through plush carpeted corridors, up short flights of stairs and marble ramps. The tower was quiet inside, almost entirely deserted. Something big was indeed going down.

Reaching the studios, Sonia J paused with her hand on the door. It was familiar—every studio in every Sentinel Tower across the globe was modelled on the same design.

‘You sure you can do this, Constanza?’ asked Sonia.

‘Just show me the keyboard. Now that we’re in, I can get direct links to the HIVE Media core mainframe. My little implanted subroutines will have been working hard—I should have control of the whole network within a few minutes.’

Sonia could sense the studio on the other side of the door. Above it, a little rectangle glowed with the words ON AIR. She took a deep breath, prayed to the ghosts of her dead husband and child, and pushed open the door with a sudden violent movement, stepping back for the very last time into her media world ...

The Comanche thundered through the African sunlight. Ahead, squatting black and massive against an endless expanse of bright blue sky, was the Dreadnought. Dreadnought NGO—the central core unit, hanging immobile two kilometres above the undulating plains, red-dust plateaux and jagged spinal mountains of Ethiopia.

‘That is
huge
,’ came Jam’s soft, rumbling growl.

Carter nodded, his eyes focused ahead. ‘Yeah. Big and ugly. Just like you.’

The Comanche climbed, gaining height, armoured rotors thumping. Scanners screamed then, scrolling with read-outs, highlighting a hundred different threats through the HIDSS and on cam-monitors inside the cabin. Carter’s jaw tightened, muscles clenching, and his eyes narrowed as below him he saw the sprawl of tanks, FukTruks, massive gun emplacements and SAM sites.

This is it, he thought.

This is the moment.

Alarms sounded, red lights flashing and scattering across displays.

‘Durell won’t open fire,’ said Jam.

‘I know.’

‘He will let you through. You have been invited.’ Jam’s head tilted, copper eyes staring at Carter’s back.

Carter smiled then, without humour, his face a mocking skull mask beneath the HIDSS. ‘You ready for this, Jam?’

‘Yes.’

‘You ready to meet your maker?’

‘I am ready to
kill
my god.’

The Comanche had risen high above the Dreadnought. Now the world spread out below them, its focus a huge black rectangle of pitted, grooved alloy with scatterings of scanners, missiles, radar dishes, comms poles and stepped buttresses.

‘Impressive,’ said Carter.

‘And a great shame—for this is the legacy of Cain.’

Carter slowed, pulling his weapons to him and checking their magazines. Then the Comanche dropped from the skies, howling, rotors a blur, tiny lights flickering on its armoured hull as it fell like a diving falcon towards its prey.

The Comanche banked, rising to level out and roar along just above the surface of the Dreadnought. Below, near the stepped entrance leading below, stood massed ranks of Nex. In their midst was a cleared circle in which stood Durell.

He was waiting, his gaze lifted to the heavens.

Carter banked the war machine, slowing his speed, and came thundering back towards the gathering of Nex. Not a single blended soldier lifted its weapon. Not a single eye tracked the screaming combat chopper.

‘I’m taking her in,’ said Carter quietly.

Jam merely nodded, H&K sub-machine gun in one clawed hand, spikes crackling up and down his forearms in a gentle rhythm of readiness—for battle.

The Comanche touched down and Carter climbed from the chopper. A cool wind was blowing, but everything else was still, and as the aircraft’s rotors whined and thumped to a stop Carter and Jam looked warily around, staring suspiciously at the rigid Nex soldiers. As the Comanche’s blades finally fell silent an eerie calm descended on the Dreadnought. Nobody spoke. Nobody lifted a gun. Nothing moved ...

Durell finally walked towards the two Spiral agents, his robes fluttering in the breeze, hood pushed back to reveal his incredible deformations. His slitted copper eyes did not glance at Jam; instead, they focused solely on Carter.

‘Welcome,’ he said, his voice a crackle of insect chitin. Carter nodded once, and looked past Durell to another figure; it was Mace, small and precise, wearing a simple grey body-hugging suit which reminded Carter of his first-ever encounter with a Nex, back at his home in Scotland years earlier. Mace’s eyes were burning brightly and he moved smoothly to stand beside Durell: a faithful puppy.

‘Put down your weapons,’ commanded Mace.

Jam gestured with his H&K. ‘Fuck you.’

‘Ahh, Jam, my old and distant lover. It is so long since I heard the music of your sweet screams. So long since I inhaled the heavenly scent of your spilt blood. I miss you, Jam. Really, truly, this old torturer misses the most intimate of times we spent together; our sharing of a hard-core reality, and a most sexually satisfying experience. One day, my
victim,
we must return there. We must dance again. We must
share
again.’

Jam growled, low and long.

‘You have come to kill me,’ said Durell, his stare still fixed on Carter. ‘But instead, I offer you a deal. You know you cannot beat me—look around you, look at the might of my soldiers, my armies, my
Nex.’
He relished the word, rolling it in his mouth like a well-aged whisky, and took a step closer. Carter felt his own body become incredibly tense, muscles taut like steel coils, the Browning in his powered hand merging with him, a cyborg part of his flesh, a joining of body and metal and soul...

‘You have a deal to offer us?’ said Carter simply. ‘You plan to destroy mankind, to eradicate the human race. You wish to infect the planet with nothing but a virus of pure Nex ... and we just cannot allow that.’

‘Oh Carter, but you already have! You killed Jahlsen, helped to destroy SpiralGRID thus making my greatest enemies
weak—
and then you initiated the Evolution Class Warhead. You sent it on its multiple missions, got past the Spiral detection systems. You have forwarded EDEN to the masses, Carter. You have killed them. Killed them all. Killed your lover, your son—your whole fucking species.’

‘That was not my intention.’

‘Maybe it was,’ said Durell softly. ‘Subliminally. In the deepest, most secret corridors of your brain.’ He took another step closer, and now was close enough for Carter to reach out and touch. Oil glistened against the twisted armoured panels merged with the flesh of his face. Durell’s tiny tongue darted out. It gleamed. ‘We have been here before, Mr Carter. We have stood here before.’

‘Yeah, when you found out that I’m a fucking hard man to kill.’

‘Exactly so. As am I.’

‘You are no
man,
Durell. You are an abomination before God.’

‘Carter, you are a pawn, my friend. You have played the game well, but ultimately you are a pawn. You carry within you a part of me. You carry within you a slice of my
soul.
A slice of my
seed.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Have you not worked out what Kade is yet? No? Not even after all these years?’

‘You are bluffing.’ But Carter had gone white. He was chilled. To the bone. To the marrow. To the
core.

‘Not so. I know Kade, Mr Carter, I know Kade very, very well. And the incredible thing is, you don’t remember, do you? I thought for a long time you were being merely strong-willed, a powerful mental adversary ... a sheer bastard for the sake of it. But then it dawned on me that you did not remember our good times, our first times, our best times. You did not remember the joining with Kade.’

‘Fuck you, Durell. Stop the Warhead. Stop it now, and it least I’ll guarantee you a clean death. Otherwise, I cannot be held responsible for my fucking actions.’

‘No.’ Durell shook his deformed, half-armoured head. Saliva glistened against his nightmare mouth. He reared up then, spine crackling like chewed ice. He shrugged rack his black robes to reveal the horror and the glory of his twisted shell, his mass of amalgamated organics, abdomen jointed like that of an ant, a wasp, his triumphant blend of insect and human.

‘So be it then, fucker.’

The air had grown incredibly still. The whole surface of the Dreadnought lay under a veil of utter and total silence. Nothing stirred, and the immobile Nex in their ranks showed no signs of antagonism. They merely displayed a serenity, a calmness, a willingness simply to observe the scene unfolding before them.