Quake (48 page)

Type 072 Yukan

Type 073 Yudao

Frigates

Type 059 Jiangwei III

Type 057 Jiangwei II

Type 053K Jiangdong

Type 065 Jiangnan

Submarines

Type 094 NEWCON SSBN

Type 092 Xia SSBN

Type 093 NEWCON SSN

Type 091 Han SSN

Type 039 Song

The Chinese reserve militia currently numbers sixteen million personnel and mobilisation (of unknown scales) is in progress.

** We are on the brink of war.

** The verge of chaos.

** The edge of destruction.

more intel to follow>>;

C
arter stared up at the Nex - watched the bright light in its copper eyes and thought:

What are you?

What do you want?

What does Durell
really
want?

‘We’ll never fucking know…’
came the bitter, acid response from Kade as—

The Nex pulled the trigger.

There came a click - not the dead-man’s click of an empty magazine, but the heart-pounding click of a stoppage. A bullet that the hammer had failed to kick into life and out of the barrel because the previous bullet casing had not been smoothly ejected ...

The Nex glanced down and shook the sub-machine gun—

As Carter growled and his boot lashed out and up, slamming into the Nex’s groin as the Spiral man rolled, whirled low and came up with his battered and bruised body screaming at him from a thousand different places. Carter felt a warm flush down his back and realised ... he had been shot. Staggering back, the Nex dropped its gun and charged at Carter, who sidestepped and rammed a right hook against the masked face, knocking the Nex to the ground. The Nex rolled and came up smoothly, its stare fixed on Carter. They circled like caged tigers, awaiting the opportunity to pounce.

Carter’s arm was throbbing; he could feel the skin hanging loose and weeping crimson tears. His lower spine was aching, as was his right shoulder and neck from the impact when he’d fallen from the KTM LC7 motorcycle. And the bullet wound ... blood was pooling down and snaking into the waistband of his trousers, and he could feel something pressing hard against the back of his ribs, grating against the clicking bone within ...

Carter spat.

Mainly to see if there was blood mixed in with his sputum and so find out whether the bullet had damaged his lungs. He was relieved to see no traces of blood but the pain was still excruciating and the waves of agony rolled over him and he felt himself sway—

Darkness started to spiral in front of his eyes, like the thick black corpse-smoke from piles of burning bodies just before the GreyDeath TankerRuns - before the governments finally realised that burning the disease-riddled human corpses merely spread the terrible designer disease and did not exterminate it...

‘My turn
,’ said Kade.

‘Kill it ...’ said Carter despondently as he felt pain overwhelming him. The trees swayed nauseatingly around him, whirling in some sickly sweet hallucinogenic vision of crystal insanity ...

Kade opened his eyes.

He saw the copse in black and white, gloomy and filled with hollows and shades of grey. Kade savagely pushed the pain aside and quickly analysed his wounds as the Nex circled in apparent slow motion. Kade smiled fiendishly and launched Carter’s tortured body forward at an incredible speed—

Kade delivered ten blows in rapid succession and the Nex blocked them all, responding with a low sweep over which Kade leapt. Kade’s boot came up, a high kick that caught the Nex under the jaw and lifted it from its feet to summersault backwards, landing lightly and smiling back at Kade.

‘You are too slow.’

‘Come and taste my pain,’ snarled Kade, blood staining his teeth.

They danced through the black and white shadows of the trees. The Nex punched Kade, connecting twice, but he rolled easily and grabbed the Nex by the throat, dragging it to the ground and pounding his fist repeatedly against the mask. Something rammed between Kade’s legs, and the Nex’s fingers found the bullet wound in Kade’s back, dug gloved fingers in with all its strength and wrenched sideways—

Kade’s scream was filled with a dying animal’s urgency.

He rolled through the leaves, mind overcome for a moment.

Red flashed over the scene in grey—

And for the first time Kade knew colour.

He growled, pushed himself to his knees in the tangle of vegetation and looked up—

Into the barrel of the Nex’s gun.

‘Let’s fucking try again,’ snarled the Nex. Its composure had gone and Kade realised, grinning savagely through his pain, that he had hurt it. He lifted his middle finger, face in a broad smile ...

‘Any time, cunt.’

The Nex’s trigger finger tightened—

And its head exploded as a heavy-calibre round struck the side of its skull. There was a moment of compression as the cranium caved inwards, its shape becoming deformed ... and then a rapidly expanding cone of flesh and bone and brain was forced inwards, creating a funnelled intensity of pressure that smashed free from the opposite side of the Nex’s skull in a bright red, white and grey spray that pattered down onto the ground. Kade met the copper stare. The Nex looked momentarily stunned. Its gun tilted, barrel down, and fell from twitching gloved fingers. Then its knees buckled and it toppled sideways, rolling slightly downhill with leaves and twigs sticking to its gore-encrusted clothing.

Kade rose to his knees. Glanced right—

To where Mongrel and Mila were making their way cautiously forward through the trees. Kade spat on the ground, pain ripping him. He slumped into a seated position and tracked his two companions as they approached. Mila held the sniper rifle, Mongrel his M24 carbine.

‘We wondered what was keeping you.’ Mongrel grinned.

‘You took your fucking time,’ snapped Kade.

Mongrel frowned. ‘But she a good shot, yes? She prove herself to you?’

Kade nodded, chewing his lip in thought. ‘You brought your pack? I’ve got a fucking bullet in my back and you’re just standing there like a dumb fuck, letting me bleed to death.’

‘I see your manners have not improved,’ said Mongrel coldly, and dropped to his knees, opening the pack. ‘I’ll have to work quickly - there are fucking Nex everywhere. This might hurt a little.’

‘Just do it,’ said Kade, turning away from Mongrel. His face contorted and he forced himself into a kind of calm. Kade hated Mongrel. In fact, Kade just hated people in general.
All people...

Mongrel cut away Carter’s jumper with a broad-bladed knife and inspected the wound. Bits of cloth had been dragged into the wound and, unwrapping a sterile pack, Mongrel slid a hypodermic needle into the crust-circled edge of the bullet hole and injected antibiotics and a chemical agent devised by Spiral for emergency field surgery. Kade gasped a little at the coldness of the injection ...

‘Let me back
,’ hissed Carter.

‘I want some fun,’ said Kade.

‘Fucking let me back!’

‘Wait... there’s something wrong ... trust me Carter, just for a dumb-fuck moment in your life,
trust me ...
’ Kade surveyed the scene again, in black and white, his stare examining the forest scene. He knew, he could
feel
that something wasn’t right.

Mongrel placed an SSG - Spiral StapleGun - against Kade’s back, which was also Carter’s hot flesh, and there was a
kerchunk.
Kade ground his teeth as white-hot agony flooded his body. Mongrel pressed a second time, then a third before removing the device and reaching for another hypodermic needle.

‘Last one.’

Kade threw himself backwards with all his might and sent both himself and Mongrel toppling over to roll a few feet down the slope - as a shot hammered the silence and a heavy-calibre sniper round tore into the soft earth. Kade reached out, picked up the syringe, spun and hurled it with every ounce of strength that he possessed—

Mila, standing with her rifle aimed, took the hypodermic in her left eye. The needle struck deep, splitting her eyeball and sending blood pumping down her face. She did not scream, so sudden was the movement and the blow ... she merely gasped, dropping to one knee as Kade climbed to his feet and Mongrel looked around, stunned.

‘She would have shot me!’

‘Us,’ corrected Kade, retrieving Carter’s Browning and checking the magazine with care. He turned to confront Mila. ‘You fucking led us, didn’t you? To that quarry? The Nex knew we were coming. You fucking set us up, you little bitch.’

Mila said nothing. She had tried to take hold of the needle but had just screamed: it was too painful to touch. Blood was flowing freely and she glanced up at Kade, her other eye wide. Her blood-splattered hand reached out to him pleading, her sobs echoing through the copse.

‘Please,’ she said.

Kade lifted the Browning.

The muzzle stared, small and round and black and unwavering.

‘You betrayed us,’ said Kade softly.

He fired.

The bullet took Mila in the throat, pitching her back-wards. Kade walked over, staring down at her pretty face. I fucking hate pretty little blonde bitches ...’ he snarled and lifted the gun as rage swamped his brain. He wanted to destroy that face.

Carter at last wrenched Kade from his body and dropped to his knees, the Browning hanging in his limp grip. He breathed deeply, pain rocking him, and stared down at Mila’s face - still pretty but undeniably dead.

‘Why?’ said Carter softly, almost despondently. ‘Why did you do that?’

Mongrel placed his hand on Carter’s shoulder. ‘You did what you had to do. She would have killed us both -tried to on several occasions, in fact. I was a fucking blind man.’

‘We were both blind,’ said Carter softly, looking up at his friend. Carter stood, swaying, resting against Mongrel’s broad powerful shoulder. ‘God, I fucking hate killing women.’

‘If it left to me, we would now be dead,’ said Mongrel softly.

‘Yeah, me too,’ whispered Carter, reliving the scene -the mad scene with the syringe thrown like a knife and then the fatal bullet to the woman’s throat.

They left the small copse behind, left behind the heavy scent of pine and the last warm dregs of the Greek autumn, left behind the body of a Nex and the bloody corpse of a woman whom they had trusted and who had betrayed them.

Just two more deaths.

Just two more corpses ...

‘Sometimes I think this madness will never end,’ said Carter as wretchedness filled him.

‘You OK?’

The Priest glanced sideways at Roxi and shook his head, lips pursed tightly, eyes glancing back down at the ground. ‘We are ruled by morons,’ he whispered. Frustration ate him from the inside out. It made him want to weep - to stand there and weep huge tears and beat his hands against the Comanche’s war-spattered fuselage.

He sent the message to Spiral.

Kicked it through a thousand miles of space.

His ECube rattled, and he squeezed it softly, expecting a reply from the WIC to his update. Instead, the blue letters glowed and The Priest read them with a further sinking in his heart. He climbed up and belted himself in behind Heneghan, the pilot. Roxi leapt in and took her position beside The Priest in a supple, easy movement; she was all glistening leather and bristling guns.

‘Now you look even worse,’ she said, large oval eyes arching him with concern.

The Priest sighed, hands in his lap, folded protectively over his Bible. Without looking at Roxi, he said softly, ‘These fools cannot decide whether to run, stand or fight. They cannot make a single decision and with each passing moment Durell grows stronger. He needs to be stopped - for his power has become great, so great that I fear he could overthrow many, if not all, of the world’s governments. And that would give him a firm handhold on the face of the earth - and from thence he would move forward in great strides, for he is ruthless indeed. By far the greater and more noble decision is to fight. But we must stagnate for three days, awaiting the decision of the men in power. Who knows what might happen during that time to give Durell the opportunity to deliver the first blow?’

‘What did the ECube say?’

The Priest sighed again, meeting Roxi’s beautiful gaze. ‘It is Carter. He has not heeded my warnings - nor Spiral’s orders. He is disobeying direct instructions from the very top. He is going to Egypt. Our intelligence shows that Durell is currently in Egypt. Carter could jeopardise everything.’

‘And?’

‘I have been ordered to intercept him. To stop him. At any cost.’

‘To
kill
him?’

The Priest nodded, his eyes hard. ‘Yes, to kill Carter. If that is what it takes.’

‘That
is
what it will take,’ said Roxi, squeezing The Priest’s hand.

‘I know. The Lord will guide me,’ he whispered, and closed his eyes.

The Sikorsky Comanche cruised into Egypt from the north-west, coming in over the Mediterranean Sea just west of Alexandria on the coast. Carter fancied he could almost feel the heat shimmering up from the long-baked sands as he slowed the chopper and its twin LHTecs whined down to spit their fumes into the arid Egyptian night.