Hardcore - 03 (36 page)

Pippa slumped back on the ramp, exhausted. Tears eased down her cheeks, scoring wide lines through settled dust.

"Get up," said Betezh.

"But... Mel! She's dead."

"And if they catch us here,
we'll
be dead," snapped Betezh. "On your feet, soldier. Chin up. All that guff. Come on bitch, I don't want to die!"

Pippa stood. She shouldered her pack, and withdrew her precious yukana sword. The black blade gleamed, a single molecule, frictionless, deadly. "I'm in the mood for death, now," she said. "I'm in the mood for some killing." Her cold grey eyes gleamed, like a machine.

Betezh blanched. "Hey, don't take it out on me! Blame whoever sent the quake."

Pippa gave a single nod, and without another word, took the lead. They moved forward, and behind them, upon some digital instruction, the ramp started to slowly lift, closing them in the belly of the SLAM.

"Trapped," said Betezh.

"Good," said Pippa. "Let's find the cunt who's running this show."

"They'll kill us. Or. Even worse." Betezh shuddered. "They might operate on us!"

"Just let them try," snarled Pippa.

"I am Dr. Farook," said the tall man, with curly black hair and two extra arms welded into his neck. All four arms waved yukana swords, an absolute fortune in rare, antiquated blades, and Pippa crouched, watching the four blades, calculating their financial worth and seemingly ignoring her approaching, imminent doom -

"
Pippa!"
hissed Betezh.

Farook hurtled at Pippa, and she leapt with awesome speed, a blur, seeming to dance between all four blades and her yukana made a single horizontal cut, and then she was through the whirling wall of metal death and landed lightly. She turned, resting her own blade on her shoulder, smiling at Betezh through the still whirling wall of silver yukana steel.

"But..." said Betezh.

Doctor Farook slowed in his dervish of death, each blade faltering. One knee went down, he stumbled, and his head suddenly detached from his body. The corpse slumped to the iron deck of the SLAM Cruiser, and blood gushed out, noisily.

Betezh gave a single nod. "You are indeed skilful."

"No," snapped Pippa. "They are indeed inept. Why are there so many bloody doctors about? It's like A&E on a Saturday afternoon. Oh no, silly me, my mistake. All the docs would be off playing golf, then." She smiled, sardonically.

Betezh fell into step beside her. "This is a hospital ship?"

"Perhaps. But what I really want to know, is what the hell went on with Miller?"

"This is one screwed up mission."

"Yeah." Pippa gave a horizontal smile. "Tell me about it. It looks to me like there's so much weird mutated shit going on down here, no way in the Quad-Gal could DropBots be so deaf, dumb and blind. Which kind of hints at a few possibilities. Either the DropBots and AnalysisBots were reprogrammed or deceived in some way; improbable, as they are extremely advanced AI designed with a singular purpose. And looking at the mess of the, um, medical staff we've met, I just can't believe they'd miss this apparently global shit. Another alternative is that QGM wanted Combat-K dead, so they sent us on what we thought was a piss-easy gig, and blam, we're suddenly in the shit without the right equipment or weapons."

"No," said Betezh, voice low. He was casting about, eyes nervous, across the myriad criss-crossings of the SLAM Cruiser's black alloy decks. Admittedly, they'd met four pockets of resistance, and admittedly, Pippa had slain all four pockets single-handedly in the blink of an eye, taking on odds that had made Betezh pale; but he was still waiting for a burst of sudden gunfire bringing a burst of sudden death. It wasn't a nice feeling. "You're wrong. I used to work internal affairs."

"Oh yeah. I'd forgot." Pippa gave a nasty smile.

"If Steinhauer or QGM wanted you dead, there are easier ways of killing you off. After all, you've got spinal logic cubes; he can pull the plug at any moment. I've got a more viable proposition."

"Which is?"

"Steinhauer suspected foul play down here. If he'd really thought it was that simple, he wouldn't have sent you, Franco and Keenan in command of your own squads. How many elite soldiers do you need to gather rock samples? So, he's got a nagging suspicion of junk foul-play down here, sends us down, knows we'll kick up the shit and start hunting down the problem... especially
without
the permission of superiors. When Miller was assigned, Steinhauer was shitting bricks. And it's looking to me like Miller was a plant; I've no idea who he was working for, but he wanted to stop this mission good."

"Hmm. I don't know. How could Steinhauer be sure something would happen down here?"

"Well, look at Keenan and Franco! Hell, even yourself! You attract trouble like a hamburger attracts ketchup. If Steinhauer had even the slightest sniff of illegal intel, then it was going to happen, Pippa, like night follows day, like... like Franco follows hookers."

"Why send us so under-equipped?"

"You call Military Grade DropShips which convert into BaseCamps under-equipped? We have enough weapons and bombs to start our own little war. Giga-Buggys, QGM comms, no, this was no simple infiltration. Steinhauer had an idea something bad was going on down here; he might not have realised the extent, but he has your files. If something was going to be uncovered, then you're the guys to do it."

"We've uncovered
shit
," snarled Pippa. "What have we found out? That there's a deviated medical population? That there are desolate hospitals, earthquakes, and lots of fucking twisted doctors who want to experiment with our flesh?"

"At least you know it ain't no picnic. And the minute you start giving Combat-K questions..."

"Yeah." She laughed. "We'll go looking for answers."

"In the words of Van Gok, ding dong!"

"I'm still confused."

"You're supposed to be. That's the nature of the beast. But we're on the right path, Pippa, I promise you. I can smell it."

"This your Internal Affairs sniffer-dog nose at work?"

"Yes. They don't call me Harry 'Bloodhound Snout' Betezh for nothing, you know."

Pippa snorted a laugh, and slapped Betezh on the back. He beamed from behind his Frankenstein-stitching facial scars. "You're a dickhead, mate. But at least you can make me laugh."

"I'll be laughing a lot more when we vacate this heap of shit ship."

"One step at a time," said Pippa, voice low. "I want to know where it's going, and what it's doing. For now, we need either the pilot, or the captain."

"So we need the SLAM's Bridge?"

"Yeah. It's this way," said Pippa, her good humour evaporating.

Using cunning and stealth, Pippa and Betezh had avoided any extra excessive conflict on their journey to the control centre of the rumbling SLAM Cruiser. As doctors and surgeons surged up and down corridors, many deformed, many bearing extra limbs or bizarre examples of human-alien cross-surgery so that all manner of physicians had tentacles and horns and tufts and suckers, much to the wide-eyed open-mouthed horror of Pippa, and the cynical deep breathing of Betezh (been there, done that, bury me in a Y-shaped coffin baby), so the two Combat-K operatives leapt into deserted side-chambers, or hid in narrow gaps between steaming pipes and smoking engine units. The urgency on the SLAM Cruiser seemed to have increased; they could only surmise somebody had found the bodies.

They spent a while, crouched by a small portal staring out from the SLAM Cruiser's flanks. Below, forests and lakes rolled by and they felt the Cruiser bank, the ground shifting beneath them. "Look," said Betezh, finally.

"What am I looking at?"

"Snow," said Betezh.

And he was right. Ahead, the forests were tinged with ice, and the edges of lakes gave way to crackling sheets.

"It's getting colder," said Betezh.

"We must be approaching another continent," nodded Pippa.

Forced from their sanctuary, they'd made their way deeper into the ship, towards the Bridge, the control centre, and the helm of operations. They pounded galvanised walkways, slipped through narrow apertures blasting hot oil smoke in their faces, and slithered on their bellies under oil-dripping tanks. They were smeared, blackened, ingrained with filth. Pippa caught sight of herself in a mirror, her hair lank and oil-drenched, and she gritted her teeth, scowling. This was
not
the way it was supposed to work out.

"I look like shit," said Pippa.

"Don't worry. Doctors will fuck anything."

"That's not a very funny joke."

"Who said I was joking? Har har."

They continued through the mechanical hell of the SLAM Cruiser's rough internals. Now, only minutes from the Bridge, their lives had gone from bad to worse to hell. "I told you not to kill so many doctors," whined Betezh, as they hung by their fingertips under an oil-smeared bridge, whilst above their heads boots thundered, followed by the sucking slug-squelches of some unfortunate human-slug hybrid wearing a surgeon's mask and carrying twin scalpels in slug-sucker appendages. "All you did was raise our profile. Now the entire bloody ship's looking for us!"

"Listen, dumb arse," growled Pippa, "what was I supposed to do when confronted by a sword-wielding maniac? Roll on my back and let him tickle my belly?"

"All I'm saying," persisted Betezh, wriggling, his fingers slipping and sliding on the slick galvanised rail as his legs kicked above an awesome drop to certain death, "is that by killing so many surgeon bastards, you made things a lot worse."

"How can I possibly have made it worse? If I hadn't killed them, we'd be dead!"

"But you're missing the point," said Betezh.

"Dickhead," snapped Pippa. "Now I understand why Franco carved chicken nuggets out of your face. You're the most irritating son-of-a-bitch I've ever had to suffer a mission with."

"That's a little harsh," said Betezh, pouting.

"Why? You look like Granny took her knitting needles to your face. I've seen better looking models in a morgue."

"Some wear our scars on our face," said Betezh, voice solemn, "and some wear them in our hearts. Look inside yourself, Pippa, my pretty little pretty face. When it comes to God's good-person roll call, I know where I'll be standing. What about you?"

Pippa ground her teeth, but as she was about to reply, a beam of light shone on them. Both looked up, and saw a small nurse-soldier type creature, crouched, torch aimed from the barrel of an MPK held in seven fingers. He grinned, with five sets of teeth. "What have we got here, my little, bloody, sterile swab-creatures? Hiding under here, are we? Trying to escape from us, are we?"

All around the gantry, faces started appearing. Or rather, what approximated to faces appeared. Small stubby arms held guns, and eyes peered from slick damaged faces which Pippa and Betezh couldn't quite place in the gloom. One thing was for sure; there was something wrong with these soldier-types; something horrible.

A myriad of cackles emerged.

"Good hiding place," muttered Pippa.

"Hey, it worked for a while, didn't it?"

"Just not long enough," said Pippa.

"Get the Net," said one of the stubby little soldiers.

There was a
fizz,
and a
pop
, and something elastic and gelatinous and encompassing splodged and swirled around the duo. It spread, like a fast-growing opaque shroud, covering the Combat-K squaddies and nipping at their fingers until they let go. With yells, they fell, and hung suspended, swinging gently beneath the gantry.

"A JellyNet," said Pippa. "Great. I'll never get this shit out of my fucking hair."

"Stop moaning," said Betezh, pulling at his glooping fingers which were sticking to the all-encompassing, stretching, quivering mass, "it could be worse, we could be dead."

"If you don't stop pacifying me, you soon will be," muttered Pippa, and shuddered as the still-expanding JellyNet spread over her face and into her eyes, ears, nose, throat, anus and vagina, creeping swiftly down the lining of her Permatex WarSuit and hugging her like a second skin of jelly strands. The JellyNet, biological AI entrapment device that it was, invaded her every orifice, locking her rigid with a sudden tightening pull, and Pippa felt sick deep down to her core. JellyNets were reputed to be made from the coagulated souls of sexual deviants. A JellyNet enjoyed its job. In every hole.

She shuddered again, and felt them hoisted up from their dangling and dragged along the floor. Little legs stomped in stumpy boots, but that was the only sound Pippa could distinguish as she bumped along the ground, the JellyNet inside her, massaging her, hugging her, caressing her in a sickly fashion.

Slowly, the JellyNet retreated. And as Pippa coughed and choked, rolling on her back like a beached turtle, she scooped jelly goo from her eyes and focused on -

Dr. Bleasedale.

"That bitch," she growled, and lunged forward. There came a
barrage
of clicking, locking machine guns in a circle around her form, and Pippa glanced down, where the JellyNet still locked her wrists and ankles together. She was still trapped: a prisoner. She looked up, grinning at Bleasedale, and with slightly manic wide eyes. "It's your lucky day."