Biohell (62 page)

“No.”

“Well
finish.
Now. And get
us the hell out of here.”

“North?”

“Yeah. To NanoTek.”

“I’m on it.” And, still muttering
about superior flight skills, clever aerial combat manoeuvres, and how
he’d
beat them damn zombies in a fair dogfight any day,
Franco—eventually—flew
them north.

~ * ~

They
flew for an hour, sometimes low through deserted city streets, sometimes
whumping
over armies of zombies. After several incidents of RPG tracking, Franco
avoided close confrontation with battalions of tooled-up deviants.

“They’re getting more frisky,”
said Keenan, as they passed low over yet another collection of maybe ten
thousand zombies. They milled around, armed to the backbone, eyes on the
heavens and the stench of fresh brain scooting overhead.

“You think they can smell us?
Even from down there?”

Keenan shrugged, smoking, eyes on
the damaged readouts from the Apache’s battered and cracked console. “Mate, I
wouldn’t put anything past them. One thing’s for sure; they’re a damned sight
more advanced than any living-dead creature has a right to be.”

Xakus remained silent, withdrawn,
often closing his eyes and resting his head back against the wall. After their
recent near-death experiences, and the death of MICHELLE, Xakus simply wanted
this mission finished. He had lost his sense of humour.

They flew through heavy falls of
snow, then out under crystal clear heavens. Cold wind howled into the Apache
F52 through a vacant lack of cockpit windshield and the three men pulled on
heavy thermal jackets which ignited with a chemical
click.

After a while, the world seemed
to fall silent.

It was as if they had left the
zombies behind.

Mile after mile of vacant, blank,
cold, dead skyscraper scrolled beneath them. There was no life here, no
movement; nothing. They had entered a ghost town, a dead world, a planet of
lost dreams.

“We getting close?” said Keenan,
after a while.

“Yes,” said Franco. “Not far now.”

They sped out under fifty-lane
highways which soared, veering above a vast and choppy ocean gleaming like
black glass. Huge thick crystal struts with a fifty-foot diameter soared from
beneath the ocean, supporting arcing bridges and walkways and elevated
cubescrapers. The giant support plinths glittered with twinkling lights.

“This place is surreal,” said
Franco, finally.

Keenan nodded. “An echoing
underworld,” he said, smoking and sipping at a coffee from the Apache’s
CoffeeChef™—perhaps the only single item aboard the vehicle which hadn’t been
battered, bashed, scratched or scorched in some way.

“It’s spooky all right. Reminds
me of Teller’s World.”

“Yeah, and that
other place
after
the K Jump.” They both fell into a brooding silence, contemplating the Zone
they’d travelled after the jump from Teller’s. By all rights, they should have
been dead. In all reality, they carried a splinter to another place in their
souls. It made them not quite human. But then, that was another story...

Keenan leant forward, catching a
glimpse of something nestling in the Apache’s foot-well. Franco had cunningly
draped a jacket over the item in disguise. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

“Franco?”

Franco looked shifty. “‘Tis
nothing boss. Honest injun.”

Keenan made a grab for the
jacket, and Franco made a grab to stop him but Keenan was too quick; the jacket
whipped away to reveal...

“Is that the damned IMS Knuckles
took from the SIM back at Porky Pauper’s juggernaut depot?”

“Aye.”

“And what do
you
want with
it?”

“Protection.”

“Franco,
it’s fucking
dangerous,
mate.
You
know
why they made them illegal. Because if some moron got hold of
one, he could do some real fucking damage! It’s about the only thing that’ll
get you ejected hardwire offworld from The City, for God’s sake! It is their
one Statute Law. Gods, they see an IMS as far worse than any suitcase nuke.
”

“Yeah? So? Well? Danger is my
middle name! Reet?”

“An IMS was the one thing that
managed to stop MICHELLE dead in her tracks. It’s one serious piece of
industrial hardware, and I’m not too happy about you smuggling the bastard with
us. It’s bad enough to think you’ve got a gun. But
that!”

“I like to know I’m tooled up,”
persisted Franco. “I just wished I’d had it to hand when those choppers
attacked me. Did I say me? I meant us.”

“What, so you could have
destroyed half a city block? Franco, it’s lethal with a capital L. We’re
supposed to be on a covert infil. What were you thinking? That we’d eat our way
into NanoTek’s HQ through a few klicks of solid concrete?”

“Hey, that’s a bloody good idea!”

“And that’s why
I
plan and
you
fly.”

As they argued, the water beneath
them became increasingly choppy. Little white waves spun jagged detail across
the ocean’s ice-rimed surface. Above, a fifty-lane freeway servicing the
NanoTek HQ on mammoth crystal supports sat, desolate and forlorn; a deserted,
abandoned road to nowhere; a Highway to Hell.

“Any sign of Cam?” Franco was
cheery. Optimistic. It was galling.

“No.”

“Any message from Steinhauer?”

Keenan checked his PAD. “No.”

“What about Pippa?”

“Why would Pippa contact me?”

Franco stared at Keenan. “We-
elll
,
I bet she knows we’re here, and I bet she wants to see us,
and
she did
used to be your bird.”

“So?”

“So, you had some, y’know, fun
times together.”

The Apache F52, battered, bruised
and scorched, started to make a rattling, banging sound. It was unhealthy, in a
mechanically failing kind of way.

“Our past relationship is
irrelevant. She wants me dead. I want her dead. You could say our love is over.”

“Ahh, it’s never over ‘til the
fat lady sings.”

“What kind of garbage statement
is that?”

“I heard it, I did.”

Keenan sighed, and Franco took
the Apache down low over the waves. Rolling ocean crashed beneath them, the
chopper’s rhythmical passage bouncing from a vast seascape.

Franco tapped the Apache’s
scanner. “Damn and bloody blast.”

“Something up?”

“It’s broke.”

Keenan snorted a laugh. “What,
the scanner or the whole fucking machine?”

“Don’t be like that, Keenan. This
baby has taken us to hell and back! She’s reliable! Hard-working! And when she
wants to kick arse, she can really kick arse!”

The rocket seemed to come from
nowhere; it slammed the tail section of the Apache howling in a raging,
expanding inferno that ate the combat chopper’s rear end and sent rotors
whirling and screaming off across the ocean, where they skimmed, and struck
down with super-heated
fizzes.

Alarms shrieked, and smoke poured
into the cockpit.

“Abandon ship!” wailed Franco,
but before they could do anything the Apache stalled and dropped from the sky,
like a bird hit by a bullet. It struck the ocean with harsh impact, black waters
slamming aside as Combat K grabbed what they could, struggling into packs as
freezing ocean rolled away and then surged inside and the Apache began to
quickly sink...

There were hisses, clouds of
smoke and steam. The fireball at the machine’s tail-end was extinguished. Smoke
rolled through a crisp clear night.

Keenan gasped, losing his
cigarette. He struggled free of the Apache’s cabin cell and trod water, which
chilled him instantly. There came a
crackle
as his thermal jacket
adjusted—the one thing keeping him alive in such a chilled environment. His
narrowed eyes roved the black sky, searching for the enemy, and he hoisted his
MPK around and above his head, trying to keep the weapon dry.

“Reliable and hard-working?”
snorted Keenan, as Franco swam towards him. They both watched as the Apache,
bubbling merrily, sank below the rolling ocean and was swiftly claimed.

“Help,” said Xakus, who was
struggling, some feet away.

Keenan swam to him, eyes still
sweeping the sky. Something had brought them down. Had it been an automated
system, like Steinhauer had warned him about, or another aircraft? Either way,
Keenan was feeling twitched.

“What’s the matter?”

In the dark, Keenan couldn’t see
shit. He blinked, attempting to adjust his vision to ambient light. Below them,
the Apache disappeared, a huge fountain of bubbles erupting on the surface of
the ocean.

“Shrapnel. From the explosion.”
Xakus was grimacing in pain, and Keenan grabbed him to stop him going under.
Waves lifted them, undulating, and dropping them savagely into a trough. Xakus
spluttered on black brine.

“Are you bad?”

Before Xakus could answer, they
heard the rotors of the Black Tiger KAZ Gunship. It cruised, low over the
ocean, search lights sweeping left and right. It slowed near their crash zone.

“Bastards,” snapped Keenan. “Well,
that answers
that
question.”

The combat chopper was lit
internally by an eerie green glow. They could see the crowd of zombies,
lolling, pus-strewn faces searching for survivors.

The chopper circled, rotors thumping.

“They found us, then,” observed
Franco. “I knew it. I
knew
we should have stayed and hunted them down. I
did, I said to you, we should have stayed and hunted them down. I did.”

“Franco, shut it.”

“Yeah boss.”

Keenan became suddenly aware
Xakus had passed out. He grasped the man tight, and realised in anger he could
no longer fire his weapon. If he let go of Xakus, the professor would sink...

“Shit. Shit.” Keenan gritted his
teeth, eyes narrowed and fixed on the circling, zombie-filled helicopter.

“Don’t worry,” whispered Franco,
bobbing on a rising wave, then splashing back down into a trough. “I’m on it. I’m
the man, the dude, the guy for the gig.”

Searchlights swept.

There came a
whine
from
the chopper... and Keenan found himself debating the issue of his own survival
when suddenly, from the water beside Franco, there surged a barrage of bubbles
and the long grey barrel of the IMS.

Keenan started to mouth the word “No!”
as Franco hoisted the weapon and unleashed hell and fury at the searching helicopter.
The IMS whined, and there came a
whump
as molecular disintegration
lashed through the heavens and the chopper slammed right, banking sharply,
warning systems screaming. Keenan could hear onboard shrills from weapon
detection systems; the chopper’s AI knew what an IMS
was,
and the
destruction it could bring.