Quake (10 page)

‘Well,’ continued the politically inept Jam, ‘I just thought you looked a bit, y’know, like a mad clown.’

‘Leave him be,’ said TT, sidling over. She pushed Jam aside and planted a large kiss on Fenny’s lips, making the pilot grin even more broadly. ‘I like the curls. Reminds me of—’

‘A poodle?’ suggested Jam.

‘No, a real rock star,’ crooned TT. And she slapped Fenny’s behind. ‘Now, are we mounting up and shipping out into the rain, or are we going to stand here all day and exchange pleasantries?’

‘Always the spoilsport,’ sighed Jam.

Fenny climbed into the cockpit and engaged the engines. Jam and Slater grinned at each other, as TT muttered, ‘You guys are just so savage - you gang up on people and try to tear them apart...’

‘Me?’ squawked Slater.

‘Ha,’ said Jam. ‘That’s just fucking life.’

They followed Fenny and climbed into the Comanche’s modified cockpit. As a war machine, the originally specced USA Comanche could only carry two pilots, whilst the Spiral Comanche VQ7s had a host of modifications to bring them in line with the requirements of anti-terrorism operations.

Once its occupants were settled, the Comanche leapt into the air, slicing up through the rain with the satisfying roar of twin LHTec engines, leaping into the darkened iron bruise of clouds and heading south, away from the nearby city of London and towards the dark churning mass of the English Channel. Fenny’s curls bobbed from the exposed rim of the HIDSS helmet in time with the howling engines.

Southern Europe was still warm at this time of year, the sun beating down from a cloudless late-autumn sky. The Comanche landed in a remote mountain location, trees whipping and bowing under the onslaught of the war machine’s rotors.

Jam, Slater and TT climbed free, stretching wearily after the insane strike across the English Channel, France, Germany and Italy. They walked through long grass, ducking beneath the idling rotors, dragging their kit and piling it beneath a large cherry tree. Slater moved off to release the KTM 800Vi motorcycles from beneath the Comanche as Jam lit a cigarette, checked the magazine on his SA1000 and walked out beyond their LZ, a hand shading his eyes. He propped his SA1000 against his thigh as he peered off into the hazy distance. He was sweating within seconds of landing under his heavy clothing, and his gaze took in the steep slopes leading to woodland and distant villages of white buildings with red-tiled roofs - a mountainous landscape of jagged grey peaks filled with a fluid beauty of deep green and the distant glimmers of a winding river.

Jam coughed on his cigarette smoke, his mind settling into a businesslike mode now that he was here on the ground, ready for work and ready for the killing to begin. His lips tightened as he thought of all the friends he had lost at the hands of the Nex; many good men and women, cut in half with machine-gun bullets, throats slit, limbs strewn around after massive terrible detonations. The war had become personal, and so Jam’s hatred was personal - he would hunt the Nex to the ends of the earth and slaughter them in their sleep.

Slater approached. ‘We’re rocking.’

Turning, they watched the Comanche roar and leap into the air, huge rotors glinting in the sun, camouflaged flanks gleaming dully as the huge machine hovered for a moment, banked, and disappeared with a high-powered engine whine. The trees settled, the late-summer scents of the woods and the cherry trees drifting across to the small DemolSquad. The grass hissed in the breeze as Jam cocked his SA1000.

‘Time for business,’ he said.

Darkness was falling as Jam slowed the KTM on the winding unmetalled stone-littered road which sliced between woodland trails. Tyres crunched, skidding a little on the loose stone, and TT and Slater pulled up close behind him. The three bikes burbled quietly, their 800cc engines ticking over, stealth exhausts electronically stealing any sounds the machines might make and so rendering them, to all intents and purposes, silent.

‘Everything OK?’

Jam said nothing. He sat, eyes surveying the incline ahead of him. Heavy woodland, conifers, beech and spruce sloped away to either side, their bases covered with the detritus of a hundred years of fallen branches and leaves. The Spiral operatives watched a deer, brown with soft white spots, wander aimlessly and pause, its head coming up to gaze at them with large oval brown eyes before it sprinted off between the trees, disappearing like a drifting ghost.

Jam gave the military hand signal for silence.

They waited, Jam watching the trail, eyes slowly scanning the tree line ahead and to either side where thick boles were scattered. Perfect ambush territory, his brain was telling him. Perfect...

With the unclenching of his fist they moved off, slower now, more warily. Something had spooked Jam, and Slater had known his friend long enough to trust the man’s instincts. A drinking hedonistic womaniser he might be, but there were two things he was certainly good at: killing and, more importantly, keeping his men - and women - alive. It was an unspoken talent. A gift.

They cruised, moving higher into the mountain pass, the roads becoming more and more pronounced as Vs of worn stone shrapnel, the slopes steeper and more rugged, the trails more and more disused. As darkness fell Jam pulled to the side of the trail where a footpath or deer trail of some kind crossed the rough stone road. Jam pulled his bike onto the trail and, ducking branches which whipped against their faces and heavy canvas combat jackets, they rode through the woods until they came to a huge natural outcropping of massive boulders, some larger than a house and balanced precariously on one another to form a natural wall. Jam pulled his bike up underneath an overhang of rock, beneath a boulder so big that it would crush the three Spiral operatives like insects if it fell. Jam killed his engine, and Slater and TT followed suit. They dismounted, warily, and unslung their weapons, Jam his SA1000, Slater his trusty double-barrelled shotgun with machine-gun modifications, and TT her Barrett IV sniper rifle with digital sights.

They made a cold camp, seating themselves on a huge log which Slater dragged laboriously into the small clearing, and Jam spun his ECube into life. Dropping it in front of him it halted, spinning a few inches above the ground on a cold cushion of matrix. Tiny sections opened from the alloy chassis and a projection spread like liquid across the ground - a contoured map of their surroundings optically linked to the advanced AGPS signals that the ECube was intercepting.

Jam picked up a stick and poked at the green and blue image. ‘We’re here.’ He lit a cigarette.

Slater, who had opened a huge tin of B&S and was shovelling the fodder into his maw cold, nodded in agreement and pointed with his fork. ‘The white blobs signify intelligence sightings?’

‘Aye. If we cross-section them it gives us quite a narrow field of operations - if you consider the contours of the terrain. If, for example, we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are using bikes like us - then there are only limited paths open to them. Even less so if they are using larger, heavier vehicles.’

‘You want to go in on foot?’ asked TT.

Jam nodded. ‘We’ll take it more carefully from here on in.’

They moved with the precision and care of hunters. Slowly, deliberately, examining all the data available to them. Through the darkness the trio moved, in a wide triangular formation where they could provide one another with covering arcs of fire if necessary, but not so close that a single grenade or burst of machine-gun fire could take the whole team out.

They climbed the steep woodland incline, Jam at the apex of the triangle, leading the way forward, ECube set to max and scanning the environment for electronic trip mechanisms or mines or any of a hundred other devices that would give away their position.

Jam halted, dropping to one knee.

Somewhere in the distance, an animal rustled in the woods. Jam wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead - his combats were heavy and the still woodland air was humid in comparison to the UK at this time of year. This, combined with the mountain inclines, was really making Jam and the rest of the DemolSquad work for their money.

The ECube flashed a warning - not with lights, for lights could be detected by the enemy, but with a high-frequency laser designed so that only Jam’s eye could match the frequency and see anything there at all ... Slater and TT, highly tuned to Jam’s lead, dropped to one knee also and scanned their surroundings. Jam turned, giving the signal for optical tripwires - very advanced, and regular tactical favourites of the Nex. Slater and TT focused their own ECubes and they stepped silently over the traps.

Closing in, Jam thought grimly, and slipped free the safety on his SA1000.

They moved through the dark woods. More inclines passed beneath their boots, until finally the land began to level out before dipping away through sparse trees towards a small wooden hut built from rough-hewn logs and with an old moss-corroded red-tile roof The windows were blacked out and Jam could detect no sounds, even with the ECube’s aural enhancers - but that did not mean that the hut was empty. Switching to thermal scanning, the ECube detected four bodies within the hut -and one seated just outside.

Jam squinted.

Motherfucker, he thought as he finally clocked the guard - a sniper - perched in a tiny hide of leaves and twigs, completely concealed from view. Jam, moving with extreme care, signalled to TT and she crawled forward on her belly and gently released the bipod, resting her silenced Barrett against the soft loamy ground.

Leaves and twigs sprang into view, and she zoomed in on the potential threat. She spotted him easily, for he was a Nex and had copper eyes. Always a give-away, she thought grimly. He was bearing a sniper rifle but did not have it trained on the surroundings.

‘Lazy,’ she muttered to herself as she squeezed the Barrett’s trigger. There came the tiniest of hisses, then a rustle of dry leaves as the Nex guard was taken through the throat - and vocal cords - and sent rolling to one side, blood leaking to feed the tree roots, mouth working in a silent scream of pain, fingers scrabbling at the bullet wound. The second bullet smashed through the Nex’s forehead, killing him instantly.

Jam gave the thumbs-up and they closed warily on the cabin. Jam’s plan was simple - an MNK, or MindNuke, turned up on full and launched through the window. It would explode silently, and with no flash - and would scramble the brains of anybody within a twenty-five-metre radius. The MNK had different settings and could be used to take out harmless targets with what was affectionately called a ‘fry-up’; the DemolSquads had found that on full power the MindNukes were particularly deadly against Nex, whose insect-blending made them almost impervious to bullet wounds unless an accurate head-shot was secured. As DemolSquad members had found the hard way, Nex were very, very tough in one-on-one combat; they felt little or no pain. MNKs evened the odds a little ...

They halted, and Jam readied the weapon, twisting the two halves of the small silver globe. Having set it, he signalled to his companions and, his SA1000 gripped in one hand, crept through the meagre woodland towards the darkened cabin.

They’re asleep, he thought.

Too easy?

Never look a gift horse in the mouth ...

He reached the wall, his gloved hand resting lightly against the rough bark of the timbers. He glanced back through the darkness and could just make out TT and Slater, scanning arcs, checking for enemies with ECubes primed and eyesight set to maximum overdrive. Jam eased himself up the wall and peered through the glass. He saw nothing but a small storeroom - but that was perfectly adequate for his needs. He placed the ECube against the glass and there was the tiniest of tinkling noises as a small rectangle of glass was sucked free. Then he pushed the MNK through the hole - and ran for it...

Skidding to a halt in the branches, he glanced back.

The DemolSquad sensed rather than heard the MNK detonate; a ripple seemed to pulse through the woods and they all shivered, aware of the damage that these silent and devastating weapons could cause. Then, standing and checking ECubes once more for enemy activity, they strode towards the cabin. Jam kicked the door down and moved forward with his SA1000 primed. The four Nex were dead in their beds, faces twisted in agony, dark copper eyes weeping blood onto their pillows. Jam poked one in the face with the SA1000’s barrel and turned to Slater, his mouth opening to congratulate the large warrior on a job well done, a nest destroyed without casualty or even conflict—

A gunshot rang out.

TT was picked up and flung against Slater, her chest exploding to splatter strips of ragged flesh against the huge man, her eyes wide and her mouth spewing blood. Jam leapt forward as a second shot rang out, slapping into the back of TT’s lolling head even as her weight carried Slater to the ground. He grunted as he hit the earth of the cabin floor, face to face with his companion, his friend, a woman who had saved his life on several occasions ... Her eyes were wide, her gaze confused, blood pouring from her mouth to wash over Slater and sting his eyes and drench his hair and jacket.

Her hands were clawed, grasping Slater’s combat jacket, but the fingers slowly went slack and Jam stepped over the two sprawled figures with a look of anger and hatred and disgust on his face. He opened up on full automatic, the SA1000’s bullets strafing across the woodland in front of him, steel slivers screaming and howling between the trees, kicking sparks from the distance, splintering timber from boles and sending a dark figure suddenly sprinting for cover—