Quake (62 page)

‘You got be fucking kidding!’ he howled.

And then he spotted the rack, located the disk and slammed it into the console.

- Thank you.

- Your Comanche Battle ‘Copter is now fully on-line.

Mongrel stared up at the rolling clouds. He took a deep breath, watching as Simmo’s tanks spread out into formation and two groups turned, disappearing through the trees to either side of the trail with their stealth motors engaged.

‘Here we go.’

He eased the Comanche into the air, wobbling slightly, and watched in horror as the rotors cut the top neatly from a pine tree, sending ragged torn branches and a flurry of mashed pine needles mushrooming into the cold wind.

‘I wish I never born!’ he wailed.

The columns of tanks joined battle in a deafening metal thunder. Shells exploded in close-quarter heavy-tracked combat, and on both sides the rear tanks spat fire into the sky. Turrets whirred, and Simmo’s HTank wreaked havoc among the Nex, its camouflage cloak making it an almost invisible target and its superior engines and turning capabilities giving it an all-important edge ...

Spiral men and women burned in their metal coffins.

Nex screamed, melting in theirs ...

‘No way to die,’ thought Simmo grimly, sweat stinging his eyes as his HTank powered up a slope impossible for a normal tank to climb and appeared behind the enemy. His turret whirled and its gun fired. For just a second his HTank was visible, and an enemy TK79 was kicked flaming from the trail and into a small valley beside the road. Flames billowed, the hatch opened and two Nex clambered out, their clothing burning, their mouths eerily silent ... Rogowski used the HTank’s 28mm machine gun to cut them mercilessly in half.

‘We’re winning,’ said Rogowski, a humourless grin twisting his lips.

Something glinted on the scanner, then was gone.

Simmo threw open the HTank’s hatch. Snow was falling, and the HTank’s armour was slick beneath him as it became totally visible when the CamCloak powered down. He watched the remaining tanks fight it out on the trail and in the woods, where his TankSquad had come from three sides, crushing the advancing Nex column in a surprise encirclement.

Something caught his eye again, through the ever-thickening fall of snow.

Simmo whirled.

‘What fuck is that?’

And then they materialised. They were HTanks, but not like any HTank Simmo had ever seen. They were a dull grey, and quite obviously belonged to the enemy. They squatted side by side on the trail, engines idling, matrix fission hissing cold chemical fumes. Simmo’s eyes went wide in disbelief.

‘You see them, Sarge?’

‘Is fucking
impossible
! Spiral hold blueprints!’

‘Sarge? I think we’d better fucking move ...’

The five HTanks were huddled in a close formation on the trail - as if taunting Simmo with their very existence. Simmo’s face darkened, blacker than the broiling clouds cloaking the summits of mountains above him. His fists clenched as a hatch opened in the hull of one of the enemy HTanks. A man climbed up, eyes blood-red and scarred, hiding their copper Nex origins. His head was heavily scarred from his run-in with drug purifiers many years earlier, and he smiled savagely at Sergeant Simmo as their gazes met.

‘You!’ exclaimed Simmo, pointing.

Kattenheim nodded, then without a word dropped into the tank’s interior. The grey Nex HTanks instantly cloaked and all five dropped off the edges of the trail to disappear in the sloped ditches bordering the road ...

Simmo dropped inside his own tank as Rogowski screwed the engines and the beast, now invisible, powered down the steep pine-strewn trail after the Nex tanks. Behind them, the rest of the Spiral SP57s gathered into a tight unit and started to advance—

‘That
fucker,’
growled Simmo, scowling.

Behind him, behind his HTank, one of the SP57s was suddenly kicked into the air by a shell arrowing through the falling snow. Fire erupted and the metal carcass was catapulted into the air, trailing black smoke. The tank sailed in an arc to vanish flaming into a copse of pine trees, setting them on fire with its hellish descent.

‘We have to do something
fast...
’ snapped Rogowski.

Simmo nodded, his mind whirling.

Five HTanks!

Five fucking HTanks!

Five fucking HTanks
just like his!

‘Those bastards!’

Growling, Simmo spread his hands over the panel controls and his shaggy eyebrows met in a furrow of concentration as tracks pounded the ground. The HTank whirled around.

‘Fuck you, Kattenheim,’ he muttered. ‘Why you not die?’

Carter watched the sparkling snowflakes, cascading and dancing around him on their wind-blown descent. Jam leapt towards him but Carter moved easily to one side and slammed the heel of his hand against Jam’s neck. As Jam doubled over, Carter brought his left knee up hard into Jam’s face and then grasped the ScorpNex’s head between both hands. He rammed Jam’s face down against his knee once, twice, three times ... and then again, and again and again. Something snapped and blood poured down over Carter’s legs as he kicked Jam away. He crunched back through the snow and watched snarling as Jam stumbled to his armoured knees with blood pooling into his clawed hands—

Reality slammed into focus.

Carter blinked, cold breath smoking, snowflakes settling against his face and hair and shoulders. Jam raised his head up, eyes narrowing, and then he was back up. He attacked in a blur through the snow.

They exchanged blows, backed away, circled.

Engaging again, Jam struck time after time and Carter blocked each punch with his pain-ravaged forearms, returning blows that Jam blocked in his turn. Carter delivered a combination of punches and kicks, but Jam backed away, still blocking, and then, snarling, heaved himself onto Carter, smashing the smaller man to the ground. Jam’s claws lashed down, pounding Carter’s head. He was left stunned and bleeding heavily onto the snow.

Carter’s world spun.

‘Let me
,’ came Kade’s confident soothing whisper again.
‘I can take this fucker-you know I can.
‘

Jam hoisted Carter up by the throat, dangling him in powerful muscled arms. Carter’s knee slammed up again, but Jam blocked. Their stares met and understanding passed between them. Jam’s claw smashed at Carter’s head, releasing the man - and Carter reeled in screeching white-hot agony, slipping suddenly on the snow and sliding blindly back to flip neatly over the battlements ...

For a horrible moment Carter hung suspended. He spun, his hands grasping nothing but air. He fell, twisting, fingers lashing out... his left hand grasped the icy lip of the battlements and he whirled round to slam against the stone wall. Below, a hundred Nex looked up with their copper eyes - and lifted their JK49s.

‘Fuck.’

Carter scrabbled against the stone.

Time seemed to slow and the cold wind nipped his face. Kade’s voice whispered messages in his head and Carter saw a bullet fly towards him, glancing from the stonework by his face. He swung around, boots scrabbling against the icy stone and his free hand reaching up to find a hold. Jam reared above him, leaping up to the crenellation and standing broad and tall and bleeding, staring down with triumph lurking deep within those seemingly emotionless copper slits.

In the valley, tanks blasted one another.

Carter saw a distant tank hull, within a globe of roaring flames, spat up above the tree line to trail dark black smoke into a trench further down the valley.

Carter glanced down, at where the waiting Nex were pointing their guns.

And up at Jam, who had lifted his glistening claws wide as if accepting acclaim from the audience of upturned Nex faces below him. He smiled down at Carter, blood dripping from his fangs onto Carter’s face.

‘Until the next time, my brother,’ Jam breathed and lifted his heavy armoured foot into the air above Carter’s face - above Carter’s grimace of hatred and anger. And
s
udden understanding—

Around them, the snow continued to fall gently.

T
he cold wind bit into Carter. He watched Jam’s armoured foot and knew that there was no mercy there, no forgiveness. They had done Belfast together. Crossed the desert after the Battle of Cairo 7. Suffered the horrors of the TankerRuns after the designer plague GreyDeath had slaughtered fifty-eight million people. And, ultimately, none of it mattered because Jam was a different person ... Jam was a different
creature ...
Jam was Nex, no longer human: and for Carter that meant death.

Carter could see Jam’s eyes.

Copper slits.

‘Wait.’

The words were a low melancholic growl, echoing through the snow. Jam obeyed instantly. He glanced down into Carter’s eyes with a look he failed to read, then disappeared from view. Carter flexed his fingers, trying to get a better hold. One hand slipped, and for precious moments he was dangling ... but he regained his grip and through all his waves of pain and pounding agony he focused his mind: to hold, not to fall; to live, not to die ... because to live meant that Natasha still had a chance at life, to live meant that Durell could still be stopped.

Carter glanced down, nervously, at the gathered Nex.

Distantly, more shells were exploding. And then there came silence. The Nex in the courtyard received a sharp barked order, and they filed from the gates in small groups, JK49s held in black-gloved hands, their balaclavas sprinkled with snowflakes. Carter looked back up—

Into the dark slitted gaze of Durell.

His hood was thrown back, his horribly deformed features exposed to the snow and the cold biting wind. He smiled - if his expression
was
a smile - down at Carter.

‘Funny how these things turn out,’ he said softly. Durell edged closer, boots now so close to Carter’s fingers that he could have reached and touched him ... if he had been able. If he had possessed the strength.

Carter said nothing.

‘I hated you, Carter, for a long time I hated you. Yes, I admit I would ultimately like you to join our cause ... I think you would make the most powerful ScorpNex ever. I think you would be a truly awesome killing machine. After all, look how well you kill with your, shall we say,
pure
blood.’ Durell laughed softly, eyes twinkling with some inner humour, some inner irony, as the snow fell thicker now and Carter listened out for more gunfire.

Was Spiral nearly there? At the gates?

Or did they have their own fucking problems?

Kade? He thought. Kade? Where the fuck are you?

But Kade had gone ...

Carter breathed deeply, fingers cramping. He glanced down. It was a damned long way to fall - and, unlike a Hollywood action film, there was no convenient tent, hay cart or series of balcony awnings to provide a soft landing for the hero. If indeed he
was
the hero. He smiled grimly at that. Have I ever behaved like a hero? he mused idly.

‘If you were ScorpNex then I could study you. Examine how and why the military processor, the QIV, the QuakeHub - why it cannot see you and predict your actions. Your future.’

Something went cold and hard in Carter’s soul.

‘I destroyed the QIII processor,’ said Carter softly, staring up.

Durell nodded. ‘Yes, you did. But as in most cases of hardware development, as one project is finishing so the next project begins. The QIV was started two years before the completion of the QIII - we had already mapped out the QIII’s successor, its superior, the next model. The next generation. And all it took was a further year of development. It was the QIV that decoded the ancient scripts, located the LVA fuel, told us where to mine ... it was the QIV processor that designed and created the Foundation Stones that we use to control the quakes. But like the chip you destroyed, it is blind to you, Carter. It is as if you do not exist. As if your timeline, your world runs parallel with that of every other living creature on this planet - but they never intertwine.’

Durell was silent then.

Carter squirmed uncomfortably.

Again, his hand slipped. His fingers were too numb to hold on.

‘I hope you enjoy your fucking kingship, arsehole,’ snapped Carter. ‘I hope it burns you into an early grave. Running the world can be so fucking
tiresome
these days, I believe.’

‘Kingship? Ruling the world?’ Durell laughed with genuine humour. His stare locked to Carter. ‘Your schemes are so petty, so small,’ he mocked. ‘Your vision is so tame - it lacks, shall we say, true imagination, true ambition. Why would I want to rule the fucking world? To rule the world in itself is no great aim, no, no, vision goes much, much further than that - as far as the sun and the stars!’ He laughed again, but this time it was a cold laugh. The humour of the dead.

‘What do you
want?’
asked Carter, his breath pluming like dragon smoke.

‘It is simple. I want everybody to be Nex. We are the Pure, Carter. And if people will not become Nex and experience the purity, the power, the
immortality
that we can offer ... then those people will die. To be a Nex - you misunderstand the feelings and sensations involved. It is evolution, my friend. The way we are supposed to be. The way we
will
all be. A
controlled
evolution. An
obedient
evolution. A Blending that removes greed, and lust, and hatred ... it will remove war, and famine, and terrorism.’ He laughed. ‘If everybody was Nex - evolved to the next stage of humanity ... then the world would be a much better place. A new Eden.’