Hardcore - 03 (11 page)

Pippa's gaze swept the glorious land.

There!

Her gaze moved back, more carefully this time. It was screened by forest, but it was there, a klick from a large oval lake. It was a building. A large building, mammoth in fact, constructed from grim grey concrete. There were barred windows, and it reminded her sourly of a prison complex. Pippa had spent her fair share of time in prison.

Adjusting the brain focus, she moved in closer and saw the edges of walls were crumbling and streaked with the detritus of millennia. Understanding dawned. This was an old hospital complex, from the days of Sick World's operational past. And yet... why hadn't the forest reclaimed the building? Surely, after a thousand years, Nature's awesome might should have taken the hospital and pulverised it into base fragments?

A puzzle, then.

And a place to be explored... Steinhauer wanted samples, soil, rock, and exploration of anything out of the ordinary. Well, this was out of the ordinary. Pippa locked the location, removed the microBinos, and clambered to the rim of the precipice. A near five-thousand-foot drop loomed, sheer, foreboding, but it held no fear for Pippa. She wiped free sweat. Nothing held fear for Pippa; she'd seen too much, done too much. Fear was just a pointless emotion that happened to other people.

She dropped into the abyss, towards the toy BaseCamp below.

Betezh was waiting with the KTM Dirt-Spaz motocross bikes fuelled and primed. Pippa had comm'd him during her rapid descent. As her boots hit dirt, Betezh looked into a face lined with tiredness but with cold grey eyes; solid, stone, unrelenting and iron.

Betezh scanned the sky. "It's getting late."

"We have time."

"Wouldn't like to get caught out in unexplored terrain after dark."

"What are you?" sneered Pippa, "Combat K or Combat Chicken Soup? Get your shit together. We're moving out. Mel, you stay here and keep an eye on the 'Camp. And that bastard Miller. Wouldn't like him sniffing around our personal effects. Betezh, you good to go?"

"Yes." Betezh watched Pippa stomp to the bikes. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Whatever you say, boss."

Pippa slung her leg over the KTM and fired the engine, which rumbled into life, vibrating the big bubble tyres. Pippa gestured, and Betezh mounted his own ride, strapping his MPK machine gun to his back and grabbing the high bars with a grimace. "I'm not comfortable on a bike."

Pippa tutted, and opened the throttle, easing around the BaseCamp and heading out across a natural rocky trail. Betezh followed, huge tyres swallowing smaller rocks and ejecting them in his wake with little
phrips
. He was muttering, but clamped his teeth tight under threat of more Pippa mockery. Betezh never had been comfortable around women. That, and his Frankenstein stitching, was probably why he was still single.

Pippa led the way, first down rocky trails, then to wide natural avenues between sweeping hillsides of forest. Scents bombarded the two Combat-K soldiers, and they powered along at a modest pace, bike suspension thudding, tyres churning grass, until Pippa finally called a halt. Betezh pulled up alongside her.

"Everything OK?"

"It's up ahead."

"And you think it's an old hospital building?"

"Yeah. Either that, or a prison."

"Why would they need prisons on a Sick World?"

Pippa looked sidelong at Betezh, her mouth hinting at a smile. "You never read your background stuff, did you Betezh? You're a man in the same mould as the Franco Haggises of this world, you know that?"

Betezh beamed, taking this as a compliment. "So? Go on, spill the beans."

"There were people here, and aliens here. Sick people. Sick aliens. So far, so normal. But then, the sickness wasn't just a cough and a cold, wasn't just a broken leg. They had the criminally insane here, as well."

"Criminally insane?"

"The nutcases, the sex offenders, the murderers. Imagine a gross genetic blending of human and alien, taking, say, a Triklon for the sake of argument; now, those armoured fuckers were tough as hell, but mentally stable. Mix the two, add a few weird proto-virus strands, and God only knows what some of those doctors witnessed down on this diseased ball of sputum."

Betezh shivered. "I thought this was, y'know, just for illness. And stuff."

"Yeah Betezh. And stuff." She blipped the throttle, and her KTM gave a savage roar, returning to fast idle. "Just make sure you've got your gun primed."

"The DropBots said the place was clear."

"Maybe so. But I don't trust nothing. Only myself. My gun. My instincts. And baby, now they're screaming..."

"Bah! You're just being paranoid. Too much combat, too many army drugs in unwilling veins. You're talking a big load of shit, Pippa, and its spewing from you like a sewage-run overflow." Betezh stumbled into silence. He remembered to whom he was speaking.

Pippa stared at him for a long, hard moment, then shot off on her bike. Cursing, Betezh followed and they sped down a slippery moss-covered hill towards the outskirts of the hospital complex.

Betezh gazed up. And up. And pulled up beside Pippa with a small skid. He noted she'd killed her engine, and Betezh did the same.

"It's big," he observed, without necessity.

Pippa nodded. "Look around. At the mud pools."

Betezh noticed for the first time they'd travelled through a massive field of glooping pools. They bubbled softly, bubbles occasionally expanding and popping on the murky grey-brown surface.

"You smell sulphur?"

Pippa nodded. "I was more concerned about the tracks."

Betezh's eyes followed several long, slithering trails to the edge of the pools. "Ahh, that could be caused by simple erosion. Y'know, rain coming down off the hillside. Or something."

"It's the 'something' I'm worried about."

Pippa dismounted, and her KTM crackled, engine cooling. She pulled free a D5 shotgun and strapped it to her back, then checked her twin yukana swords which glinted with a hint of green.

Green?

Pippa and Betezh glanced up at the same time, where the edge of the horizon was glowing a fiery green.

"What the hell's that?" snapped Betezh, jumpy now.

"Night's falling. Sick World's moon, Jangla, reflects a green radiance. It's a kind of reverse sunset; we're seeing it now."

"So... soon it'll be dark?"

Pippa nodded, and re-sheathed her swords. "Sure looks that way."

"Maybe we should head back to BaseCamp? Y'know, explore in the morning, sort of thing?"

Pippa gave Betezh a withering look, then touched her earlobe comms. "Mel, you receiving? Good. Is everything OK there? Good. Listen, we've found the hospital complex I saw from the mountain top. We're heading in now, to explore..."

"Ow!" snapped Betezh, and slapped at his neck. Pippa frowned at him, and continued to speak to Mel.

Logging out, she moved forward and examined a small, red welt on the big man's tanned, dark skin. "What is it?"

"Felt like a bite."

"But there's no life down here," said Pippa, with a smile. "Come on."

They moved forward, stepping gingerly over a drag-trail perhaps two feet in width. Pippa knelt, examining the ground. "Whatever it was, it came from in there." She nodded up ahead, at the ancient hospital.

"Ouch!" Betezh slapped the back of his hand. He scowled. "Something bit me, Pippa. I ain't happy about this, because I'm the sort of man who attracts all manner of nasties and bugs and flying bastards. Look, you've not been bitten!"

"Maybe I have purer blood."

Betezh followed Pippa, and they came to the towering walls, crumbling grey, pockmarked with centuries of erosion. Wire cores stood out from several fallen sections, and the air was musty, not just with trace elements of sulphur from the nearby bubbling pools, but from a kind of inherent, locked decay on a slow-time half-life release.

Betezh stared at the sky. "It's definitely getting dark."

"Don't be a pussy." Pippa stepped across the threshold, between twisted, mangled, rusted gates which had been folded back as if by an angry giant's hands. There was a huge yard beyond, leading from the perimeter walls to the main building complex, and it was littered with rubble and debris, steel wires and huge chunks of old masonry.

"Why are there no weeds? No trees? No plants in cracks and crevices?"

Pippa shrugged. "Maybe it's the sulphur," she said, softly.

"Nothing wrong with
my
crack," giggled Betezh.

Pippa stared at him, then moved forward between piles of rubble. The main hospital complex ahead was a huge, cubic structure. Barred windows graced only the upper reaches, all small black holes, like missing teeth, hinting at nothing within. The only entrance Pippa could see consisted of large double doors; large enough, she presumed, to accept a big alien on a stretcher-trolley from a blue-lit turbo-ambulance.

"Ouch!"

Pippa turned. "Are you making this up, dickhead?"

Betezh stared at her, and relaxed into a lazy smile. "No girl, of course I'm not. Hey, you know, when we get back to BaseCamp we should crack open a few beers, y'know, tell some funny stories. I bet Mel has some crackers, y'know, about life as a zombie, and what it's like on your wedding night." Betezh stepped forward, swaggering a little, and poked Pippa in the upper arm. She slapped away his hand.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you mean, what am I doing, chickpea?"

"
Chickpea?
Betezh, have you been
drinking?"

"No! Of course not! That would be so unfopressional."

"Unfopressional?"

Betezh frowned. "Unfopressional! Pippa, babe, girl, chick, chipmunk, have
you
been drinking?"

Pippa gave a quick look to the double doors, which were gleaming with green light from Sick World's rising moon as shadows lengthened from the fast setting sun, then pulled free her PAD. "This might hurt," she said, and slammed the PAD extension cable into Betezh's neck. It gave a blip, as it analysed his blood. Pippa pulled free the PAD with a
slup
and analysed the readouts. She frowned... as something
nipped
her neck.

"Ow!"

"Y'see!" Betezh started to giggle, and suddenly fell back on his arse in a manner of drunken comedy slapstick. He started to roar with laughter, and slapped both his knees. "This is just
great,
don't you think? In fact, this looks like a good place to sleep." He started to curl into a ball and close his eyes...

"Shit." Pippa knelt by him, and slapped him, hard, a brutal stinging slap to his heavily-scarred cheek. "Listen! There's morphine in your blood. You're feeling euphoric." Something buzzed by Pippa's face and she twitched, an incredibly fast movement. The something
blurred
past her vision, then hovered, a foot before her. It was a tiny insect, a tiny metal insect, and Pippa's eyes narrowed as she saw instead of a face, it seemed to have -

A diminutive, almost microscopic, hypodermic needle.

Pippa's arm moved fast, still enclosed around the PAD which gave a chime, and snapped the insect from the air, imprisoning it. The PAD started to buzz as it analysed its trapped specimen and Pippa looked around, wary now. She drew her sword. Betezh giggled again. "Wha' you gonna do with that, chicken? Slice the little buglies in half?"

Something buzzed, and Pippa slammed the yukana. There came a tiny
flash
as the insect disintegrated. "Yeah," she snarled and, grabbing Betezh's collar, hissed, "Move your arse, soldier, we need to get inside the building. I've got a nasty feeling these little fuckers are gonna come in a swarm..."

"Then we'll get high!" chuckled Betezh.

"No. Then we get dead, then we get
eaten.
Move yourself!"

Betezh scrambled across the yard, almost on all fours as Pippa's eyes, narrowing through the half-light of the day/night transition, picked out more flying bugs. And the frightening thing was... she'd been right.

They rose from the bubbling pools, moonlight glinting green from the many insects' silvered carapaces, and buzzed in a tiny storm across the yard towards the scrambling duo... Pippa dragged Betezh with all her might, grunting and cursing and screaming at his giggling and general laid-back euphoria as they sprinted now for the abandoned hospital building and slammed against doors, which rattled in a heart-sinking
I'm locked
kind of fashion.

"Bastards!" screamed Pippa.

"Just press the button," slurred Betezh, grinning inanely.

"What fucking button?"

"That big red OPEN button, there." He pointed with a drooping scarecrow arm.

Pippa slammed her palm against the button. There was a
buzz,
and the doors opened easily allowing the two Combat-K squaddies to fall into a large, well-lit reception area. Outside, a
swarm
of insects sped towards the opening and the warm, fresh meat sprawled inside, sweating and stinking nicely. Pippa kicked at the doors, which lazily, languorously, started their juddering procedure of closure.