Hardcore - 03 (8 page)

"Pippa?"

"Yeah, boss?"

"Keep an eye on Olga and Betezh. There was friction there." Olga and Betezh had a history of argument, from their tense time together down on the decimated world of The City during the outbreak of Biohell.

"I noticed," said Pippa, smiling softly, but without humour. "Hey, have you noticed the way Snake watches you?"

"Indeed."

"You gonna be OK?"

Keenan stared at Pippa, at her beautiful oval face, pure white skin, her neat, bobbed hair.
God
, he thought,
you are so beautiful. But you are the murderer of my family. How can you stand there before me, breathing, smiling, looking so fucking casual?

He took a deep breath, his hate a distant, glowing ember, just waiting for the right injection of oxygen to re-ignite. Keenan ground his teeth. No. There were wider, more important issues at stake. Like saving millions of people from the expanding and invading junk armies.

His petty, minor, pathetic personal revenge would come later.

Much later.

"I'll be just fine," he breathed.

Franco ambled out, fiddling with his Kekra and leaving Keenan alone with Pippa. She moved to him, cat-like, graceful, and stopped, close, and he could smell her natural perfume, the aroma of the woman he had once loved. And hell, he thought. Say it. He still loved her. She was a narcotic, permanent, running through his veins. He would never be free of Pippa's addiction.

"Can I ask you a question?" she said.

"Ask away."

"If we weren't locked together, in this squad, in this mission, and," she gave a sardonic smile, "by spinal logic-cubes that would detonate our spines if we dared to go against one another... damn Quad-Gal Military's sense of humour, right?"

"Yeah?"

"If things were different, would you still try to kill me?"

Keenan moved closer. They were inches apart.

"Yes," he said.

Pippa's eyes closed, long lashes dark against pale translucent skin. They opened. Her grey eyes stared up into Keenan's. She licked her lips, leaned forward, and kissed him gently. For a long moment he allowed the kiss, then pulled back.

"I cannot."

"Nor I."

He stared at her. "I... cannot forgive. I am not a great enough man."

"I still love you, Keenan."

Keenan turned, and strode from the Ship Lounge.

Franco closed the door of his SleepCell and sat on his bed. It was a narrow alloy affair, with crumpled covers and a blue alloy headboard. Franco glanced around despite the room being only eight feet by six and, happy he was alone, reached behind the headboard and pulled free a small, crumpled sheet of paper. It was thin, flimsy, not like the RealTime Tuff-Maps
^TM
used by the squaddies. With trembling fingers Franco unrolled the parchment on his bed, and stared at the rough outlines of the three continents of Sick World.

Franco grinned to himself, finger drawing a line which traced a jittery trail across the map. Franco double-tapped the flimsy material and organo-paper hummed and zoomed in. Again he tapped, and again it zoomed... until it registered a building, and within, a marker.

"Treasure," muttered Franco, his eyes wide, mouth open, lips wet. If nothing else, he thought, I'm going to come away from this lame mission a rich man! Soil analysis? Pah! Rock gathering? Pah! Searching ancient ruins? Humbug! Why couldn't QGM find me a real damn mission? Shooting things! Or, more importantly - his eyes gleamed -
blowing things up!

It had to be said, Franco was an expert with explosions, detonations, and indeed any form of high-powered violent particle acceleration. His main job before Combat-K had been that of demolitions expert in quarrying the White Tooth Range at Reinhart and Seckberg Quarries Ltd, and his sole responsibility that of engineering and structuring explosions in order for miners and quarrymen to reach precious lodes. Franco could smell HighJ from a thousand paces, and tell exactly what type and quantity of explosive had been used - just by the roar of detonation. It had been commented that he was an obsessive; he'd be the first to agree.

Now, he stared at the map.

He thought about pitiful, meaningless, pointless, futile damn missions.

And how, in the boredom-filled interim, he might make himself a very rich man...

The Rapid Offence SLAM Cruiser
Rearward Entry
howled at the zenith of its still accelerating arc, and below, spinning into view, loomed the colourful and slightly ovoid planet, Krakken IV. Sick World. The Hospital Planet. The Continent of the Cursed.

Touching a few metres from orbit there came three heavy-duty
clangs,
and the military DropShips detached with a roar of stabilising motors and spread, like petals from a flower stem, and slammed down towards the spinning panorama below...

In a blink, the SLAM Cruiser was gone.

Combat K and their teams were on their own.

The three teams had separated into personal DropShip vehicles, and each team watched through vertical-drop windscreens as Sick World enlarged at a horrifying rate. Colours and gases swirled and coalesced, and the planet became a panorama, became continents and oceans. Sunlight gleamed across the Sick World and Franco, in his own DropShip, gasped as he piloted the fast descending vehicle.

"Beautiful, ain't she?" said Shazza.

"Impressive," agreed Fizzy.

"OK, checking earlobe comms," said Pippa from her own craft. "Are we all plugged in?"

One by one each squad member confirmed, and Pippa ran through PAD integration and Tuff-Map bandwidth.

Through the higher reaches of the atmosphere the three streaking ships left arcing trails of vapour, gently curving away from one another as they began descent and flight-path programming to individual locations. Only then, did Keenan's low growl come over the monitors.

"I've got a problem."

Snake leapt forward, his eye analysing the DropShip's scanners and readouts; he glanced at Keenan, whose knuckles had gone tight on the control rods. "We're dropping fast, Keenan. What's up?"

"Something's locked the ailerons. I can't bring us out of the dive..."

"What is it?"

"The scanners are saying a physical obstruction."

"I'll go and look," snapped Snake, turning.

"No," said Keenan. "You take the controls. I'll check it out."

"Ed," said Snake, "go with Keenan, see if you can help."

Ed nodded, and followed Keenan up the DropShip's internal gyroscopic ramp. Keenan reached the cargo doors and heard engines screaming as Snake applied extra backward thrust, beginning to slow their descent... but he knew, knew they were going too fast in their violent drop. If they didn't level out, they'd plough a furrow in the landscape deep enough to plant a city.

Keenan peered out of the portal, but couldn't quite see the ailerons. The DropShip had started to shudder. He hit a palm-pad which read his ident, confirmed, and with a
hiss
the door slid open a few inches allowing an insane, buffeting wildness to enter the DropShip interior.

"What's going on, Keenan?" came Pippa over the earlobe comm.

"We're about to become pizza."

Keenan edged towards the buffeting gap, and Ed came up close behind. Keenan glanced back at the wiry, tattooed man, who gave a grin of encouragement which reminded Keenan of a shark encouraging a goldfish into its jaws.

OK, he thought. This is where I explore my trust issues!

"You hold on tight, now, won't you?"

"I'll do my best, Keenan," said Ed, grabbing the larger man's belt.

Keenan peered out into the buffeting insanity. The wind nearly took his head clean off, and he could smell a fresh, bright scent, the purity of air without heavy industrial tox. It reminded him of home. Galhari. A home now ravaged, abused, invaded, a home nothing more than a junk-infested, toxic wasteland...

Eyes streaming tears, Keenan peered out. But could see nothing.

"We have two minutes!" screamed Snake down the corridor. "I can't guide her, Keenan! We'll end up in the sea!"

Keenan dragged his head back in, took a deep breath, and stared hard at Ed. "I'm gonna have to go out."

"You'll be crushed by the pressure, man," said Ed.

"No. The Permatex will protect me; I just need you to keep an eye on the straps and reel me in when I'm done." He ran across the corridor, slamming open a locker to pull free a long coil of TitaniumIII cable on a reel. Back at the door, he clicked and locked the reel in place, and snapped two locks to his own belt.

Then he moved to the edge, and the howling, screaming wind.

Keenan glanced at Ed; their eyes met. Ed gave a single nod.

Keenan stepped out into the buffeting wind, hands like clamp-claws on the recessed holds down the DropShip flanks. The world was a bright expanse. It was like God had peeled the top off the world and let the sunlight in.

This is insane
, his mind rebelled, as pressure slammed him like an axe blow.

I am going to die
, he thought.

I'm going to be sucked free and smashed into the fucking engines...

Shit.

Slowly, inch by painful inch, Keenan forced himself along the wall of the screaming, rocking DropShip...

CHAPTER THREE

SICK WORLD I: KLUDEK

It waited in the slime, playing with its peroxide-blonde hair, twirling tight curls and bobs between fingers with lacquered, polished nails and enjoying the feel of oozing mud and rotting vegetation on pale and pasty skin. A distant roar infiltrated the heavens, and the creature looked up, a quick, insect-like movement. Blue eyes narrowed in a fat slug-face, and cherry lips pulled back over crooked yellow teeth as the nurse
grinned,
lips peeling right back over a distended jaw bone as a tongue fought at teeth cage bars and finally pushed free on a bed of saliva, unrolling and unrolling right down to the nurse's plump, generous waist, where it thrashed and twisted, like a caught eel.

"Come - to - me," croaked the nurse, levering her arms back and jacking her body up from the slime, where it was revealed she had no legs, just two rounded stumps with stalks of bone protruding like wood from tattered skin. The nurse smiled, and it was a friendly smile; the sort of smile an inmate gives to the warden. "I want to make you better again," she said, in all innocence.

Once, during a stint as an engineer on a Class III Cruiser whilst training for Combat K, Keenan had slipped and fallen into a pressure vat. His protective SuckSuck rubber clothing saved him, but even after the
suck and hiss
of the blink-response inflatable, the experience had been incredibly painful, a continued pummelling of pressure waves, rolling him and crushing him, as if beaten eternally by plate-sized fists. Now, clinging to the side of the DropShip, Keenan felt a twinge of memory - only this time he was thousands of feet above the ground, and one wrong slip, one twist, one fall, and he'd be sucked away and broken on rocks far below; or worse, ground like minced beef-substitute through the vibrating, howling engine ports.

Keenan edged along the wall, fingers locking to recess after recess. Cloud streamers hissed past his face. Water trickled down the neck of his WarSuit. The world was a howling cacophony, every sense slammed and battered, every moment a perpetuity of pounding. Teeth grinding, boots slipping and kicking, Keenan edged and edged, and more on instinct than a realisation of where he was, glanced up, the engine ports closer now, as were stubby wings and aerofoils used to guide the DropShip. Keenan's eyes narrowed. There, halfway down the aerofoil flap, was a black alloy box - effectively, a wedge. Shit. The ship's been sabotaged, he thought, mind a whirl of sour cream. He eased out his Techrim, itself a battered animal of combat, and with the whole world juddering and pounding around him, his ears whistling, piercing him with pain, he levelled the weapon which vibrated under pressure and fired off a shot. The
crack
was lost, and the bullet missed. Keenan fired again, and a spark ricocheted from the wedge, but the alien artefact remained securely in place. Eyes streaming tears, Keenan released a long, easy breath and focused. He squeezed the trigger, and the alloy wedge flicked, and was gone. Immediately the aerofoil started responding, and Keenan put his gun away and eased himself back along the flank of the DropShip. The machine groaned, and dropped suddenly, and through tears Keenan could see the ground rising awesomely fast.

Snake, what are you doing?
he thought.

Snake! Pull the bastard up...

Engines howled, a deep reverberating drone beginning past the edges of hearing and rising fast in pitch. The DropShip's nose lifted, levelled, and started to gain height. Keenan caught a glimpse of violent jagged rocky peaks, rimed with ice, flashing beneath his boots and the belly of the DropShip. He licked dry lips, and the thoughts which flickered fast though his mind were far from complimentary.