Hardcore - 03 (47 page)

Pippa sighed, and looked at Keenan. He returned her gaze, and smiled. He was ragged and battered, torn and bloodied. He had two broken fingers strapped tightly together; luckily, one wasn't his trigger finger.

Outside, the simple bone train picked up speed. It chugged. Steam formed a billow around the funnel as it sped between hundreds and hundreds of rows of hospital beds, all manned, cleaned, perfected by the Army of the Mad.

Pippa gave a little shake of her head, caught Keenan watching her, and she returned his smile. Then with a sudden start, she wondered how she looked and stood, locating a polished plate of chrome by the door. She stared into the face of a stranger, a battered, bruised, bloodied, tattered hooligan, a street-tramp with crap in her matted hair, grease and dirt-streaks on her swollen face. "Shit," she muttered, equating that to the way she perceived herself now. Something touched her hand, and looking down she realised it was Keenan's questing fingers. She took his hand, and he squeezed her fingers, and in that simple single moment, in that spark of connection, of brushed skin, of honest intimacy, she suddenly realised everything was all right between them. Well, not
all right
, but the kill had gone. Keenan no longer wanted her dead. And that, in itself, was a massive leap forward; a milestone achievement of incredible understanding. Possibly even forgiveness.

I didn't do it
, she said to herself.

And she almost believed it.

I didn't kill his family.

It was a set-up. I was framed.

But how? Why? And by whom?

And a word leapt to her mind, and somehow, deep within the pulse of her blood, she felt a tickling sensation that swept through her veins and this connection with Keenan, this reawakening of trust, sent sparks running up and down her spine and seemed to
ignite
the alien essence left in her by the
Kahirrim,
Emerald. Ganger, came the word. Search the ganger. And Pippa knew; knew it was her
employer
, Quad-Gal Military, who had turned her into what she had become; but more than that, they had betrayed her, made Keenan hate her. In a flash of understanding she realised QGM had murdered Keenan's family. But why? Why would they do such a thing? And how had they used
her
as the puppet?

Did she
really
use scissors?

With a start, Pippa realised she was crying, and Keenan stood, his body close to hers and rocking gently with the lull of the charging train. The rock pushed them together, and for a brief instant the lengths of their bodies touched. Then they shifted away, like a tease, and Pippa looked up into his eyes.

"It wasn't me," she said.

"Shh," said Keenan, and touched her lips.

"I wouldn't do that to you."

Keenan grinned, like a skull on speed. He wanted to say,
of course you wouldn't, I believe you, I love you, I know you would never do anything to harm my family
. But he didn't believe it. He knew; knew Pippa was a killer, a psycho assassin of the lowest order. He knew it. She knew it. And she knew he understood her soul. The dark corners. The dark places only she, alone, could explore in the lost hours of the night.

Instead, she rested her head against his chest. And was happy with that.

Further down the carriage, where Franco had gone to calm himself after the twisted realisation he rode inside a giant phallus, and thus needed medication to straighten his warped brain, Franco suddenly became aware of a proximity. By the time she was there, it was far, far too late.

"Hi sweetie," rumbled Olga, and sat down, taking up two seats which flexed, creaking in protest.

Franco stared into that wide brutal face, with its tiny dark eyes, and he sought as hard as he could to find something to complement her on. "Um," he said, grinning wildly, the narcotics in his system playing sudden havoc with his reality; with his major malfunction. "Your ponytail is looking very neat today," he said.

"I oiled it," said Olga, and leant in close. She stank of sweat and gun-oil and cordite. Her huge bosom pressed against Franco urgently and he laughed nervously, wondering what it was about him that attracted lunatic women who didn't understand a simple "fuck off".

Franco went to shift, but she was there, nuzzling his neck, his throat clamped in one powerful hand. Her tongue wormed trails of saliva across Franco's neck and cheek and forehead.

"Ahh," he said. "You see, the thing is... ahh..."

"You like, no?" said Olga, and nibbled his nose.

Her free hand, the one not clamped around his throat in a strangler's iron hold, stroked along his inner thigh.

"Um, I was just a-thinkin', we, should, possibly, wait, a, like, a minute," said Franco uselessly. He was like a turtle on its back. A newborn chick. A fly caught useless in a web... stuck and struggling.

"Om," said Olga, as her mouth clamped over his, and she French-kissed him with a strength, power and ferocity he'd totally expected. She was like a drowning woman coming up for air. She was like an industrial bolt-sucker. She was a turbine in reverse, only she didn't just suck him of fluids, she sucked him of life, and when she finally released him from her predatory grasp, gasping and flailing like a gassed and headless chicken, blue in the face from oxygen starvation, swooning from a manic head-rush, the small blue pill finally kicked in, surging Franco's system with a
flood
of narcotic craziness that sent his mind spinning and his brain pulsing. New colours were invented in nanoseconds. New tastes skimmed Franco's palette. He tasted red and smelt chords and saw the essence of peaches and cream.

"Wow," he said. "Do it again!"

And so, as the train chugged through Ward 1 with Franco kicking and flailing like a murder victim, he had the snog of his life.

The train journey went on for longer than anybody expected. Occasionally, Lunatrick would shout back through the open window of the carriage from his perch in the engine's cockpit. Things like, "Over there we installed five hundred new beds, just waiting for the next delivery of needful mental patients no we didn't actually excuse me I think we did gods I wish you two dickheads would stop your jabbering," and, "That's where we had the great Diazepam Wars of the Fifteen Decades but we all agreed on different sides and it's hard trying to direct a battle when somebody else in your own head knows your plans and sells them to the opposing force for extra dollars for sugary donuts in the canteen." The occupants of the bone carriage nodded, sagely, and wondered just how big a
ward
could actually be. They also wondered just
when the hell
Lunatrick would realise that he and the other patients were in a closed circuit, a loop, and no matter how well he maintained his Asylum - well, they weren't ever getting any new patients. Period.

The train started to increase its speed, accelerating over the horizon of beds. They thrummed past, and Keenan glanced at Pippa. "How many do you reckon there are? A million? Two?"

"At least," said Pippa. "It's a gross misappropriation of hospital funds. The management should be fucking ashamed of themselves. Ha ha."

Keenan gave a smile halfway between nasty and sardonic. "Well," he said, grimacing, "why change the habits of the last fucking millennia? It's always the hospital management that fuck it up, with deviated funding, backhand bonuses and under-staffing. They should be fucking skewered."

Snake eased forward down the carriage, and sat beside Keenan. "It's going all weird," he said.

Keenan stared at Snake as a lion stares at a human; in base hatred, distaste, but with the wariness of meeting a despised cunning and lethal fellow predator.

"What is?"

Snake nodded to the window. "Look."

Outside, the speeding passage of beds seemed to
bend.
The whole vision of the outside world was curving, and the mental patients had fallen behind, now leaving nothing but vast acres of spotless, neatly-folded hospital beds. Millions of them. Waiting for patients that would never come.

Even as Keenan watched, the curve became more pronounced and he stumbled to his feet, glancing over at the other members of the squad, all of whom were agitated. All except Franco. He was staring out of the window, whistling.

"What do you see?" snarled Keenan.

"Nothing," said Franco, giving Keenan a strange look. "You OK? You look like that time you had seventeen pints of Wife Beater and that dodgy ostrich kebab. You were sick all over that homosexual lap-dancing senile delinquent. Those were the days!"

"It's curving!" said Keenan. "The whole world outside is curving!"

Franco glanced outside, then back to Keenan. "You're drunk, mate," he snorted. "It's fine, reet?"

But the world wasn't fine. They were moving faster and faster and faster, and the curve became a ball into which they sank, or sliced, down and down through layers of hospital beds, through stacks of arched bedside tables, and Keenan ran to the front of the carriage and bellowed, "Lunatrick! What the hell's going on?"

"Don't worry," boomed Lunatrick, his fat jowls wobbling under his huge beard. "We have to accelerate to enter the Globular Plain, we need to dissect the Layers to get to the Upsamid. It's a protection mechanism, to keep out unwanted thingies, just sit back and relax, and let old Uncle Lunatrick guide you."

Keenan slumped back, and felt the curvature pinning him to one side of the carriage. They were all holding on now, grasping brass door handles and black leather seat-straps as the pull of G-force edged them across the carriage towards the right-hand side... all except Franco, who sat perfectly still, unmoving, staring at the other members of Combat-K in shock and horror, with maybe a sprinkling of confetti confusion and a big dollop of craziness.

"What the damn and bloody unicorn-radish hell are you all playing at?" he snapped. "Are you all
crazee
, or something?"

And that was it, Keenan realised. They weren't insane, but were entering a place of insanity - a distillation of madness. And in that place, only the truly insane could happily exist. Keenan ground his teeth under the agony of forced pressure, eyes fixed in jealousy on Franco's relaxed body, his wrinkled brow, his flexing fingers ready to come to the aid of his dodgy and quite obviously
ill
friends in need...

"You mad bastard," muttered Keenan, and to the rattling shrieking clanking of the engine and carriage, he was forced away from reality, and passed out, and rattled on into a seemingly endless oblivion.

Cam sat on the bottom of the Silglace river and was trapped, pinned down, made a prisoner. He felt the savage acids attacking his case, organic and intelligent in their simple methanol-based intelligence, but he was smug in the knowledge that they could do nothing to penetrate his advanced shell and bodywork. He was not simple flesh and bone, but a PopBot! Yes! A War Machine! He had survived Biohell! He was, it had to be said, a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450. I have integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and some severe Put Down[tm] War Technology. He grinned. He knew it.

However.

The Silglace, vegetable-sentient, knew it was having little effect on the
invader
; thick tendrils of silver mucus encased Cam, and held him there, pinned to the bottom as he frantically sought a power source from which to scour a recharge.

After a billion possibilities, Cam realised with a start, and a seeping feeling of dread, that there was
no
central power source, no wholesome seat of energy to which he could attach, vampiric, and drain the host of valuable resources.

No.

And without power, Cam would never be able to prime his motors to break free of the Silglace's pull. They were entwined, locked together, and if the Silglace so chose, it would last for an eternity... or until his shell eventually rotted and crumbled to powder.

"Bugger," he said. "I buggered this one up." It seemed the most succinct response.

He sat for a while, angry with himself, fuming with himself, and wondering what the hell he could do.

All comms were down. Except the spinal-logic pulse idea. But that, hell, that only worked on humans, right?

Cam gave himself a smile. He had an idea.

He sent a
pulse
using the Silglace as a carrier.

And thousands of kilometres away, something snoring woke up.

Keenan awoke slowly, as if from a Sunday morning slumber. The world was fuzzy, a distillation of disorientation. His mouth felt like feathers. His eyeballs were stuck to their sockets. He groaned, and sat up with wooden teeth and tartan thoughts, to see the rest of the squad similarly coming around as if from a toxic anaesthetic. He glanced back, but the train was nowhere to be seen - only Lunatrick, big and fat and grinning, with his rainbow robes billowing, his eyes sparkling. He scratched enthusiastically at his beard.

"Come on, come on! Up up up! We have a long way to go!"

Keenan glanced to where Lunatrick pointed, across an undulating white landscape to the distant bulk of the Upsamid. He squinted, but could make out no details through an early morning haze.
Impossible, right? We're inside the planet, inside Sick World, how can there be a bloody atmosphere?