Hardcore - 03 (19 page)

"Is he really that powerful?"

Elana waved her arm, summoning a platform of swirling colours. It eased towards the ledge, and bumped gently, nudging the rocky lip. She fixed Keenan with a stare he could not read, her emotions lost to him on that subtly-skewed alien face.

"He is Hardcore," she said, simply.

"We are the
fucking smart party!" howled Ed, and gave a high five to Maximux from the back seat of the 6X6 Giga-Buggy as they roared across the desert. Snake was watching a blip on the scanner. It was Franco's exact location. And Franco was on the move.

"OK, we're locked on to him," said Snake. "You two need to stop congratulating one another like amateur homosexual bank robbers, and get the guns ready. Right?"

Max stared hard at Snake, then smiled a wide smile, and Snake knew what that smile meant. Maximux would wait until they had the money, then make his move. Snake, however, would be waiting.

They ploughed on, engine roaring, sand billowing in their wake. Above, thunder rumbled in the heavens, a deep and urgent grumbling.

Snake glanced up, then back at his two companions. "Thunder?" he said. "In the desert? I thought it never rained here?"

"It doesn't," said Ed, frowning.

Snake slowed the Buggy, warily. He hadn't lived so long, and retained his single eye, without being cautious. Thunder rumbled again. Now, the green-tinged night sky was lit by a flicker of lightning. It was green, and cracked the distant horizon apart. And yet, and yet -

"There's no rain," said Snake, eyes narrowing.

"What kind of thunderstorm has no rain?" said Ed, uneasily.

Snake stamped the brakes, and the Buggy slid to a stop. All around, the desert was silent. Black, rimed with green, an eldritch night scene.

Distantly, there came a pattering sound.

"Ach!" breathed Ed, "here comes the rain. Thank buggery for that! I was starting to get worried."

"Wait," said Snake, a quiet word on an exhalation of mistrust.

"For what, Big Man? Christmas?" This brought a snigger from Maximux, ever one to share in a bit of sarcasm.

The pattering got louder. More violent. And ahead, sweeping towards them, they saw a storm of -

"
Rocks?"
hissed Ed.

"It's the fucking Rockfall," screamed Snake, slamming the Buggy into gear and spinning sand in a panic of acceleration. The Buggy slewed around, spitting out a streamer of sand, and ploughed off down a steep sand dune, swerving to avoid rocks.

"What's a Rockfall?" asked Maximux, patting Snake on the shoulder.

"It's a storm that pisses rocks all over your head," screamed Snake. "Now let me fucking drive!" His boot slammed the floor, and they howled across packed desert, jigging left and right, whamming past long-fallen rocks, skidding around outcrops of jagged granite, and all the while, behind, a sweep of rocks tumbling from the enraged heavens followed at speed, filling the horizon with a sheet of granite from edge to edge, and, more importantly, more worryingly, it was slowly gaining...

"We can't outrun it!" came Ed's shrill cry.

But they tried. They had no other option.

The thundering was louder, green lightning crackled, and the rain of rocks came slamming towards the Buggy like a granite tsunami, a solid blurred teeming wall of merciless death...

And then it was over them. They drove, as if in tune, in a perfect equilibrium, rocks smashing and thudding all around as they powered along.

"You're doing it!" hissed Ed, patting Snake on the shoulder.

The rock hit the bonnet of the Buggy with such force, it broke the vehicle in two, flipping it up into the air from nose to arse, wheels spinning skywards with a grinding screech of metal. Sparks filled the area and the Buggy tumbled over and over and over. In its falling trajectory more rocks struck the Giga-Buggy, knocking it left, then right, bashing it and pulverising armoured steel as it was spat across the desert like a pinball in a machine, to finally come to rest on its roof, clicking.

Rocks thudded all around, some as large as a house.

The three men climbed from the Buggy, took one ragged look at each other, and with arms over their heads - as if that would make a difference - ran for it.

Sourly, Snake thought, it's gonna be a long, hard, bastard night.

They drifted down, for what seemed days. Keenan fell into a state of standing catalepsy, unmoving, suffused by the magic of the Cathedral's tumbling colours. "It is so beautiful," he said at last, as coils of red, green and amber lassoed his body and then gently spun away, entwining like snakes in oil.

"Do not underestimate the Colours. It is my Cathedral's defence mechanism. There is a high-density magnetic field charged with elenium-particles; the colours drift, ensnare, but at my command can become rigid. I can rip you into a billion atoms at the flick of the wrist," she said. And smiled.

"And yet, you still fear VOLOS?"

"And so should you. I have a nasty suspicion he will shortly become aware of your intrusion and seek to stamp you from the planet. As he did when the place was colonised, for the purposes of Sick World."

"So it was VOLOS who chased away all the medical staff? A thousand years ago?"

"Chased away?" Elana shook her head. "No. It is worse than that. Let us say he is millennia bored, and enjoys his little games."

"I feel like a child," said Keenan. "There is so much I don't understand."

"All will be revealed. If you search in the right places."

Within minutes the small pad drifted down and bumped against a rocky floor. Keenan jumped off, glad to have something solid beneath battered boots, and then glanced up. The world above was colour, constantly shifting, bright and ethereal, like a billion coils of entrapped rainbow. He had never seen anything quite like it.

"Where are we going?"

"I said I was an artist. After the fall of the Junkala, I appointed myself protector of that which I could save."

"You want to show me paintings?"

Elana smiled again, on that curious pitted face, and Keenan realised the facial gesture was for his benefit. To try and put him at ease. Shit, he thought. What I would give for a solid MPK machine gun right now. Gritting his teeth, and limping a little, he followed Elana across the rocky floor and into a side-cavern; here the colours began to dissipate, and the air felt cleaner, more pure, and Keenan suddenly felt almost abused. As if he'd been breathing some toxic agent. He coughed, and rubbed at his chest with broken fingers, realising his lungs were burning.

The cavern was lined with paintings, some large, some small, some twisting out from canvas and paper and bark and glass and metal, erupting in colourful splendour from a 2D background into resplendent 3D, all in paint, without any form of structural support. Keenan, ignorant to art by choice, walked across the rocky ground, eyes scanning the thousands upon thousands of pieces of work. He realised Elana had stopped and, turning, he gave her a questioning look. "What am I searching for?"

"You contain the Dark Flame. Use that which resides in your soul."

Keenan shrugged, and strode along row upon row of paintings on glass using metal inks. Then something seemed to stab him in the throat, pain flaring, and he turned, focusing on a tiny image no larger than five or six inches. He walked towards the painting, boots scuffing on rock, and had to crouch to see the picture clearly.

Keenan stared - and with a start, he realised the picture stared back.

It showed a metal face, simple, with round eyes and a mouth spewing cables. "Welcome, Keenan," said the painting.

"How can you know me?"

"I have been waiting for you."

"I don't understand."

"I knew you would come. Down the millennia. I have waited for you."

"But you're just a painting?"

"No. I'm a timeline, an umbilical between one moment and another, two static points of space and time locked and held in place by powerful machines created by the Spinners."

"So, you're alive?"

"In my present, yes, but it is many thousands of years before you even exist. You must listen, for time is short, and VOLOS awakes even as we speak. VOLOS is a Machine God, this is his planet, his world; it has always been his world. Once the Junkala ruled VOLOS with powerful engines, bending him, twisting him, forcing him into subservience in the name of Culture. After centuries of imprisonment, VOLOS broke free of his chains, and his retribution was terrible. He slaughtered, maimed, and helped deviate the Junkala..." Suddenly the metal face calmed. The junk, for Keenan suddenly realised, this was what he perceived, relaxed and exhaled with eyes tight shut. Then the orbs flashed open, swirling dark crimson, and the face said, "Keenan. You must find VOLOS. You must destroy VOLOS. He helped Leviathan create the junks. He controls the junk armies. They are his plaything. He is bored, millennia bored, and cannot be bargained with."

"Where will I find VOLOS?" Keenan's voice was cracked, like desert-dry timber.

"Seek the Silver River."

"Who are you?" whispered Keenan.

"I am the Junkala King. I am He who ruled VOLOS. I am He who corrupted VOLOS," he smiled sadly, eyes downcast, "thus bringing about the downfall of my species. He's coming, VOLOS is coming..." Suddenly the face screamed, such a high-pitched terrible screaming as Keenan had ever heard and his hands slammed over his ears as he reeled backwards, hairs on his neck standing tall, skin crawling in horror. Before him, the metal face in the painting disintegrated, became liquid, and flowed like mercury on oil spreading into a faceless, amorphous, shimmering pool.

Shaking, Keenan turned to Elana.

"He just died?"

"Yes. You witnessed the Breach of VOLOS. It is part of junk History. The One Lesson."

"But... I saw it happen? Right now?"

"Yes." Elana nodded. "Only the Spinners could explain. They were experts at manipulating Time." She looked around, and Keenan suddenly realised the whole cavern was trembling. Elana hissed, crouching, and snapped, "This is no Rockfall! VOLOS has followed the signal from the Junkala King, VOLOS has tracked you down through millennia to here at this point, this time, and he's
coming
for you, Keenan!"

A roaring filled the cavern, and the vibrating rose in mammoth leaps until the whole world felt as if it were being ripped apart, and Keenan stood at the epicentre of the largest and most violent earthquake he'd ever encountered. Huge rocks fell from above, tumbling and crashing around Keenan, who sprinted, slamming his back against a wall as the top of the Cathedral was physically
ripped free,
as if by some awesome storm.

"What can I do?" screamed Keenan; panic, a rarity, welling in his soul.

Elana turned fear-filled eyes on him, and she was crying. She was crying blood from red junk eyes. "Run!" she screamed. "Run for your life! Find VOLOS! Destroy him if you can, and you will stop the spread of the junk armies!"

A rock, larger than a house, slammed down from above and obliterated Elana from existence. Keenan blinked. A sickness surged through him, and he leant against the vibrating walls as blood ran in trickles from the edges of the huge boulder.

"Keenan," came the impossible words of VOLOS, from above.
They weren't spoken words, or any form of communication Keenan had ever experienced. They were just there, digitally transcribed at the forefront of his brain in a deafening, roaring cacophony of anger and rage and pure white hatred. There was a choking noise, and Keenan realised, in horror, that the terrific, deafening sound was laughter. "I have waited such a long time for you, Keenan! Come to me. Come to me, little man!'

PART II

WAR OF THE WARDS

CHAPTER SIX

ACCELERAPER

Pippa dreamed, and in the dream she walked barefoot through sand and sun shone on her glowing skin and the world felt fine. Somebody approached at a fast run from behind, feet padding sand, and Pippa fought down the urge to draw her yukana and slice off his head as hands grabbed her, hoisting her into the air, squealing and kicking, her wet hair snapping round as she was pulled into a tight embrace and she looked down into his face, the face of her dream lover, once real, now gone. "I love you," she murmured, nuzzling him and kissing him, and knowing deep down inside that it was this love, this nurturing, this
connection
which killed the violence in her soul, turned her from monster to human, from killer to sane. He kissed her back, tasting sweet, and lowered her gently to the ground, bearing her to the sand, his hands stroking her wet hair, and her eyes were closed and she was lost in the ultimate pleasure of the moment, welling deep down within, radiating outwards as she felt the pleasure building, building, escalating and rising to consume her -

Her eyes clicked open.

It was dark. She knew immediately something was wrong and tried to move, to sit up, to glance about, but found she was strapped tight to a metal trolley. Her mouth tasted bad, like a skunk had sprayed it, and her head pounded with a three-bottle punch. Above, strip-lights lay in metal darkness. There was a humming sound, bass and deep, and the air felt fuzzy, strange, almost unreal. It reminded her of something. Something
bad.