So It Begins (19 page)

  Franco coughed, and looked to Keenan, who struggled from the water clutching his chest. He felt like he’d suffered a heart attack. Felt like he’d died. “Get back on the boat,” he wheezed, and they all scrambled aboard.

  As they cruised into violent storm waters, wind howling, the heavens pounding their insignificant craft with needles of rain, Pippa gave Keenan and Franco a savage snarl. “We can assume the bastard PAD is well and truly compromised, yeah? We’re on our own, boys.”

  “Just the way we like it,” smiled Franco sardonically.

  The storm died in a sudden rush of warm air, like a dragon blast. As if in response, or perhaps by coincidence, the river became a flat platter, glass, ice. Pippa, now pilot, slowed their cruise to a halt and they sat for a few moments, rocking, listening, peering at the overhanging edges of uncompromising metallic-stinking jungle.

  “Never get out of the boat,” muttered Franco.

  “What?” snapped Pippa.

  “Just something I heard.”

  “How far?” said Keenan.

  “Three klicks. We’re getting close. That’s why we met that little scouting party. Was it an accident, I wonder, or were the bastards looking for us? Maybe they saw the SLAM come in, thought they’d investigate.”

  “To all sensors it’d still look like a meteor strike.”

  “Still,” said Pippa. “I’d want to know what came down twenty klicks from
my
base of operations. Especially if this place
is
a Nano-Bomb Factory.”

  “Let’s assume they know we’re here,” said Keenan, mind ticking. “What would General Zenab do? He can read minds, or so we’re told. See through tangled paths of the future. Has he seen his own impending assassination?”

  Pippa stared at Keenan. “That isn’t even funny.”

  “Do you see me laughing? OK. So you’ve got patrols in the jungle, textbook. What about the river? Patrol boats? We’ve not seen anything here. What else could you use?”

  “It’s not deep enough for a sub,” said Franco, frowning.

  “When I went in the river before, this water, it’s not normal. I know it’s red because of mineral deposits, but it was also full of . . . oil, or something. A lubricant. It wasn’t natural.”

  “Is that why we can smell metal?”

  Keenan shrugged. “Not sure. But whatever it is, it may have a purpose. It reminded me of the Terminus5 Shell reactor; remember the bunker? Full of that insane AI bio-wire which ate through your bones and separated a person long-ways out?”

  “I remember,” said Franco, voice low. “You think they may have AI tech?”

  “I always thought the junks low-tech, but . . . we should prepare for anything. This gig stinks like a dead cat.”

  “You want to ditch the boat?”

  “Maybe. I’m considering it.”

  They paused, and something
slopped
in the river. They glanced at one another. “I saw something,” said Pippa, carefully, hoisting her weapon, nervous now, gun tracking an invisible foe. The river seemed deeper, here, more stable; and yet more threatening at the same time. Like a motionless predator; a hunter waiting to pounce.

  Ripples suddenly drifted away from the Rubber Duck, or at least, from something near it. Pippa stood, alongside Keenan, and they both aimed weapons at the flat surface.

  “I don’t like this,” moaned Franco.

  “Shut up. Pippa, get us out of here.”

  Pippa nodded, and eased them forward. They moved across the water, still as a lake, green-tinged from the moon. Ripples flowed, slapping shores. The engine purred, near-silent, and Pippa angled toward the shore . . . .

  It was this which saved their lives.

  The
thing
squirmed across the river, surfacing sideways like a sidewinder serpent, a long, bright silver eel as thick as a man’s waist and perhaps thirty or forty feet long. Pippa gasped and Keenan started firing at the creature undulating toward them. Pippa joined him, but their bullets were absorbed with tiny
plops
as it accelerated, a massive eel that crashed into the Rubber Duck with stunning force, sending all three Combat K soldiers flipping into the river . . .

  Keenan went under, felt something cold and metallic brush his WarSuit, recoil for an instant, then
slap
him with such force only his armor stopped immediate death through impact. He choked. Everything, all wind and life were knocked from him and yet he forced himself to swim, powerful strokes, toward the shore. He felt the eel’s approach rather than saw it, and dived, twisting, by some miracle passing under the undulating body of thick muscle. He struck out, under the river, fighting strange currents until he clambered up the shore, dripping, panting, muscles screaming like irate fishmongers. Franco was already there, heaving, hands on knees, looking sorry for himself in a hangdog fashion.

  “Where’s Pippa?”

  Franco stood upright, stared out, watched the mercury eel circle their Rubber Duck and suddenly ensnare it, its whole body flipping from the river to wrap around the boat again and again in huge circles, and with a sudden pulse and tug, crushed the boat into a hissing, buckling, pulped oblivion.

  Slowly, Franco pulled free his Bausch & Harris. “She’s there. See. Pippa, Hey!” He waved. She seemed disorientated in the gloom, in the drizzle of light rain, but focused on his words and struck out toward him. However, the eel also heard Franco and turned, writhing in foam as Franco snarled a curse and aimed down the rifle’s sight.

  “You’ll draw attention to us!” snapped Keenan, hoisting his own guns and casting about for enemy.

  “I can’t let her
die
,” said Franco.

  He fired, a muted
thump
and the bullet disappeared in the eel’s mass. Pippa powered on, but the eel moved fast for something so big. It gained swiftly. If it caught her, it would crush her without doubt. Franco breathed deep, and fired off another three shots in quick succession. The thump of bullets echoed off, flesh slaps, muted by the jungle.

  “It’s going to kill her,” said Keenan.

  “Not on
my
watch,” snapped Franco, and began pumping shot after shot after shot into the silver eel, unaware if his bullets had effect, unaware if this thing was something they could
kill
. What was it? AI? A simpConstruct robot? Organic? Or a meld of all three?

  “Come on!” urged Keenan.

  Franco kept on firing, and the eel suddenly slowed, its sidewinder motion becoming erratic. Pippa reached the shore, but the eel’s tail lunged from blood waters and wrapped around her chest. It dragged her back, and both Keenan and Franco leapt forward, guns thundering and howling into the thick silver body which twitched and pulsed. Pippa screamed, hands straining against the metallic surface. Then her fingers slipped inside, as if entering jelly, and came out, shocked, trailing umbilicals of silver eel strand . . .

  Franco dropped to his knees on the rocks, in the mud, his eyes locked to Pippa’s and reading the pain and suffering there. He pulled a BABE grenade from his belt, gave her a wide grin, pulled the pin and plunged his fist
inside
the eel’s apparently semi-solid body. He pulled free his arm, rocked back on heels, and fell to his arse. He watched as there came a muffled
crack
. Ripples shuddered along the length of the eel, and it twitched, every molecule vibrating out of synchronization with every other. Then, the creature was still.

  Franco and Keenan dragged Pippa from the strange creature’s embrace, Pippa coughing, holding her chest. Without her WarSuit she’d be a mashed pulp, a skin bag of crumbled bones. Even now, the armor was buzzing warnings; it was seriously damaged, and would fail if it took another impact.

  “I’d say they know we’re here,” said Franco.

  “Let’s move out. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we go home.”

  “I’m beginning to hate this planet,” said Franco, pulling his sulky lip.

  Pippa coughed, and stood. She took several deep breaths. She looked annoyed. More than annoyed. She looked ready to
kill
. “Let’s go assassinate this bastard,” she said, and hoisted her shotgun with a scowl.

  They moved like ghosts through the jungle. Up close, the trees were metallic, coated in a sheen of oil. They were not living, not organic, but simple machines designed to imitate life. A machine jungle. An army of sentry steel.

  “What kind of freak creates such a place?” said Franco, frowning. It was the waste and pointlessness, more than anything, that offended him.

  “Just keep your eye on the PAD.”

  For the last two klicks they’d evaded nine junk patrols, keeping low and quiet, going to ground at the first hint of enemy activity. But the fact still nagged Combat K—if the enemy knew they were there, on the planet, alertness would be increased. And the enemy may also now have discovered the SLAM cruiser. The last thing a soldier needed after a bad gig was a compromised ride home.

  Franco, bringing up the rear, caught Keenan’s signal and dropped instantly, silent. He carried the Bausch & Harris, now, in his big pugilist’s paws. He was twitchy; on edge. A man on a high wire. A hairline trigger.

  Dropping to his belly against the floppy, metallic leaves, Franco commando-crawled forward. They were on a cliff-top overlooking a bowl valley devoid of jungle, although with so many thick creepers it could happily be described as a bowel valley. To the left, the Blood River eased sluggish and wide. Boats were moored there, low-alloy vessels with big guns. Several ornately carved stone buildings squatted at the center of the cleared jungle, lights shone in windows. And yet the whole place looked deserted, especially as this was supposed to be the Nano-Bomb Factory. It felt wrong, and much too small in scale. If this was a Nano-Bomb Factory, would General Zenab really surround himself with a mere handful of junk protectors? If this man really was as richly rewarded, highly prized, and threatening to QGM as they claimed, wouldn’t the security be far more aggressive?

  “This stinks,” said Pippa.

  “Like a ten-week dead pig,” added Franco.

  “Let me think,” said Keenan. “Is the PAD still dead?”

  “Like a ten-week dead skunk,” said Franco.

  Keenan held up one fist. “Stop! I need to think. Pippa, is this the target?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s so wrong.”

  “I know that, Kee. This ain’t no Nano-Bomb Factory.”

  Keenan bellied down, chin on his hands, and watched the modest activity which surrounded the small stone buildings. The carvings were ancient. Alien archaeology. He shuddered. It always filled him with a desolation, as if humans had only been kicking around the Quad-Gal for a few minutes—which in reality, they had. Aliens, sentient life-species as a matrix, had been around a billion times longer. This simple infancy made humanity feel quite insecure; something they made up for with aggression and a savage empire.

  “Maybe,” said Keenan, “this bastard is so tough he doesn’t need protection. We’re looking at this wrong. Maybe Zenab is an ancient alien creature, more powerful than any of us dreamed. After all, we’re assuming he’s human, because QGM assumed he was human. That was never confirmed.”

  “Shit intel, again,” snapped Pippa. “The story of our lives.”

  “We need to make the best of it,” said Keenan. “This is the gig. I’ll head in alone; you two cover me, especially Franco with that lethal bastard rifle. OK?”

  “I don’t like it,” said Pippa.

  “I didn’t ask whether you liked it.”

  Pippa took his arm, stared into his eyes. And he could read it there, the love the need the want the lust, sexual desire but more than that, a deep and meaningful connection.