Hardcore - 03 (62 page)

"There's something else," said Keenan, looking back to VOLOS. He was calm now. Serene. He could picture his little girls, in his mind, his Rachel, his Ally, and their deaths were a bitter pill under his tongue and in his throat and he realised; he was tired of life, tired of the fight, and all he wanted was to be reunited with his children. With his dead children...

"I can help you stop Leviathan," whispered VOLOS.

The avatar stepped forward, and in pale white hands it held a small envelope.

"Inside are instructions on how to halt Leviathan, how to build the machines used to imprison him... the machines that broke down, the machines you helped to... destroy. Combat K. You can put right that which you broke. You can save the Quad-Gal... and more. Protect it for another million years."

A hushed silence fell.

Pippa shook Keenan, harder now, and tears were coursing down her cheeks. Keenan lifted his hand, and made a strange gesture; from the black walls long green tubes emerged, like the wavering tendrils of creeping vines, and they slowly wound around Franco and Pippa. Pippa started to kick and struggle, but within a second she was held tight and lifted easily from the ground.

"You will send them back to the surface? With Betezh, and Olga, and Snake?"

"Yes," said VOLOS.

"I agree," said Keenan, face devoid of emotion.

"No!" screamed Pippa, as the avatar moved forward and handed the envelope to Franco. He clutched it tight, and tears stained his cheeks, ran down into his ginger goatee. "You don't have to do this, man," he snarled. "Keenan! Look at me! There are other ways to solve this problem! You don't have to die!"

"I won't be dying," said Keenan, gently. "I understand. Emerald gave me that gift. And I know VOLOS will not betray me; he will not betray
us
. This is our answer, Franco, our cure, Pippa. Don't be sad. This is a fine day, I assure you." His voice was melancholy and as Franco and Pippa were dragged backwards, upwards, to be deposited in tiny capsules and shot up through rock and stone and metal, they saw the last images of Keenan stepping forward, off the ledge, suspended, and then sucked down into the raging blinding black fire to be gone, and merged, and assimilated into the Core that was VOLOS.

The sun eased over the horizon, fingers of orange pushing away the green light of a dying moon. Heat flooded Sick World, and despite the snow, the remainder of Combat-K were warmed as they sat, on rocks, staring bleakly out across the rugged landscape.

Franco clutched the small envelope tightly, and rubbed at his nose occasionally, lost in thought. Betezh and Olga had built a fire near the Giga-Buggy and, using utensils and ingredients from the vehicle store, were cooking a pot of stew over the flames. Snake was locked by Snapwire to the Buggy's rail, his face dour, expression unreadable. He would await court martial and trial by Quad-Gal when they lifted from the planet.

And Pippa... Pippa sat a short way off, alone, a gentle breeze ruffling her hair. She had ceased crying, and her face had the rosy after-glow of sorrow, her eyes a hard edge of bad intent. She glanced up, as Cam emerged, weaving across the snow, and halted amidst the camp with a spinning shower of blue lights.

"What happened?" came his tinny voice.

Franco explained, in a low, quiet monotone, everything that had occurred since the Silglace and their crash. Cam listened in silence, spinning, all lights now gone from his battered casing. When Franco had finished, Cam simply sat, unmoving, in the cool winter breeze.

Pippa moved over, and sat close to Franco, leaning in to him, sharing his warmth. He reached around her, squeezed her, and for the first time in his life made no sexual innuendo, no lame jokes. Sadness ran like molten lead through his veins, melancholy through his mind. With regards dirty jokes; well, he simply no longer had it in him.

"I can't believe he's gone," said Pippa, eventually.

"No," said Franco.

"I loved him," said Pippa.

"Me too."

"He's at peace, now."

"With his little girls."

"Yeah." She smiled at that.

"Have you looked at the envelope?"

"Not yet." Franco opened it, for once fumbling with clumsy fingers normally used to setting the delicate det. cords on bombs. He pulled free a digital sheet; they asked Cam to translate.

"It's very simple," said Cam, for once without his bouncy humour. "There are co-ordinates, and a very simple set of instructions. You seek... the Junkala Soul. The Soul of their Race, taken by Leviathan and used to deviate their genetics. With this, you can re-infect them, as with a computer code virus, only on an organic level. You can make the junks good with a disease they once lost; you can stop the war, and the death."

Franco nodded.

"I haven't got the heart," said Pippa.

"What, you'd let the Quad-Gal die?" snarled Franco suddenly, feeling a surge of mad anger and they both leapt to their feet, guns out, aimed at one another's heads. Pippa's eyes were hard, cold, grey, filled with hate. Franco crumbled first, and lowered his Kekra.

"I'm sorry, Pippa," he said, miserably.

Pippa melted. She sighed, and sat down, re-holstering the D5 alongside her yukana swords. "Me too, Franco. You know I'd never harm you."

"Oh yeah?"

She stared at him. Hard. "Yes," she said, voice in cold stone. "I've lost one member of Combat K. I don't need to lose another."

"You must go to the Ganger World," said Cam, his AI voice soft.

"That's a bad place," said Franco.

"A dangerous place," agreed Pippa.

At that moment, they heard a distant rumbling, a grind, a slamming of steel on the hard-packed earth. From snow-heavy conifers there came a trembling, a crashing, breaking of branches and boles of trees; and then, like a vision from an esoteric metal nightmare, the digger lurched from the tree-line and ground its way through the snow and rocks, and basically anything that stood in its path.

Combat K watched the vehicle approach, then settle down with a sigh and a hiss of steam. A hatch opened, and Miller screamed as he was launched head-first into a deep snowdrift, where his legs kicked in a modestly comical fashion. Betezh moved over to him, dragged him out, rapped him on the head with a stew-ladle, and tied him up alongside Snake, who growled at the treatment.
Nobody
deserved to be locked up with a Health and Safety Inspector. Except, in fact, maybe a traffic warden.

"Mel!" bellowed Franco, and ran towards the digger.

Mel clambered down, and picked Franco up in an embrace that showed, despite the beatings, despite the screaming, despite the
divorce,
there was still love there. Olga looked on in disapproval, and stirred her stew, a woman cuckolded.

Franco looked around, beaming, elated that his true love, his true
zombie love
, was still alive. But there was no Keenan. No Keenan to make wise-ass cracks about taking her to the vets, being a
bitch,
or having her jabs done.

Franco let out another deep sigh, a sigh of disbelief, and of resignation. He moved back to Pippa whilst Mel disappeared to sort out her severe personal hygiene problems.

"I miss him already," he said.

"Yeah."

"Although he was a sarcastic bastard."

"That was our Keenan."

"So, what we gonna do now?" Franco peered around. "And where's that dumb mutt bloody dog, Sax, got to?"

"He trundled off across the snow going
ticka ticka ticka,
and muttering 'ruff' and 'borrocks', to pick up the damn DropShip so we can get our arses off this diseased and depressing ball of shit."

"Can he fly?" frowned Franco.

"Yeah," said Pippa, and smiled. "He showed me his license. He also told me about saving your dumb ass, on that collapsing snow cliff. He's one cute little metal doggie friend, y'know? Except for that wig. It's a bad wig."

"He's an acquired taste," muttered Franco. "Only I haven't acquired him yet."

Betezh brought them a bowl of stew and, reluctantly, Franco and Pippa sat alone, eating not tasting, and remembering Keenan. Only when Franco was dipping his third slice of sausage into the stew, did he repeat, voice little more than a whisper, "So, Pippa, what we gonna do now?" It was the voice of a small child.

Pippa looked at him, and drew her yukana sword. She angled the blade so that an esoteric blue glow from the snow flashed along the terrible, deadly weapon. "We're going to the gangers," she said, and smiled without humour, grey eyes bleak. "We're going to stop the junks."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Remic
is a British writer with a love of extreme sports, kickass bikes and sword fighting. Once a member of an elite Combat-K squad, he has since retired from military service and works as an underground rebel fighting bureaucratic oppression wherever he finds it. He does not condone the use of biomods, and urges human- and alien-kind to rebel against the market-oppression of nihilistic mega-corporations.

Hardcore
is his seventh novel.

You can discover more about Andy Remic at
www.andyremic.com.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to the inhabitants of SICK WORLD, for making themselves so easy to write. Kisses to Sonia, for modelling the, erm, nurses, uniforms, and big hugs to my mad and bad little boys for making life so entertaining. Thanks must also go to th3 m1ss1ng for their esoteric musical soundtrack, and to various friends and colleagues for fine test reading duties. Thanks also to Ian Graham... for liking the babies.

Finally, a big hearty sausage to all at SOLARIS, especially for that time when they got drunk and dressed up in PVC and, erm, taught me about the dark side of the medical profession.

Also by Andy Remic

Spiral

Quake

Warhead

War Machine

Biohell

Kell's Legend

Praise for Andy Remic

"Hard-hitting, galaxy-spanning, no-holds-barred, old-fashioned action adventure."

The Guardian
on
War Machine

"
War Machine became my favourite science fiction novel of the year. Yes, you heard correctly... I loved every testosterone-fuelled second... And the sequel is easily one of my most anticipated new releases..."

Fantasy Book Critic
on
War Machine

"
Non-stop blood-and-guts action thriller."

SciFi.com
on
War Machine

"
A free-for-all punch-up, relentless and breathless and hugely enjoyable and for no extra cost, it's all held together by a clever storyline. A good read? Most definitely!"

SF Revu
on
Quake

"A hard-talkin', hard swearin', hard-fightin' chunk of military sci-fi."

SFX
on
Quake

"A new writer who knows what a regular reader sitting on the bus wants - action. Pure Die Hard, pure Rambo. This has got to be a film, surely!"

LadsMag
on
Warhead

Also from Solaris Books,
The Age of Ra
by James Lovegrove...

The Ancient Egyptian gods have defeated all the other pantheons and divided the Earth into warring factions. Lt. David Westwynter, a British soldier, stumbles into Freegypt, the only place to have remained independent of the gods, and encounters the followers of a humanist freedom-fighter known as the Lightbringer. As the world heads towards an apocalyptic battle, there is far more to this leader than it seems...

"The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write."