Warhead (19 page)

‘Yes, I—’

The Nex leapt from the cloud of smoke, crashing into Carter with incredible speed and momentum. They both fell, rolling heavily as Carter’s M24 skittered away across the floor. The Nex smashed a right straight against Carter’s head, then another. Carter rolled as the Nex got to its feet and leapt. Boots slammed into his face and his head bounced against the concrete. In a daze, he pulled free his Browning, which was promptly kicked away.

The Nex stood, hands by its side, staring down at Carter. It flexed its gloved fingers, and spoke in a soft voice. Carter realised that this Nex was
female.

‘You are Carter. You have killed many of my kind. I think it is time that we danced.’

Carter climbed to his feet and spat out a bolus of scarlet mucus. The blows had left him momentarily dazed and his mouth was full of saliva, phlegm and blood. He rolled his neck, dropped his pack to the floor, and nodded.

The Nex attacked. She was fast and powerful, throwing a series of complicated punches at Carter who staggered backwards, almost unable to defend himself. She left his forearms and shins bruised and battered, sending pain signals to his brain which he cut off ruthlessly. She jumped, booted feet seeking his face. But Carter twisted swiftly, slamming an overhead punch into the Nex’s heart and driving her against the wall. As Carter started forward, she rolled to her feet and although she showed no signs of pain, Carter knew he had hurt her.

The Nex changed tactics. She circled him warily as Carter studied her face: flawless skin, copper eyes, short sweat-streaked spiked hair ...

‘
Pretty
,’ said Kade.

‘Shut up.’

She attacked once more, and Carter’s fist slammed into her nose. She stumbled, sprawling backwards. Carter bent, picked up the Browning and pointed it at the recumbent female Nex.

‘No,’ she said.

Carter could read the fear in her eyes. I thought they felt no emotion, came a little unbidden voice at the back of his brain. But time ...

Time was everything.

He pulled the trigger, and a single bullet entered the Nex’s forehead, slamming her head back to thud against the concrete. Blood pooled out.

Carter grabbed his pack, holstered his Browning and retrieved his M24. He moved through the smoke towards the steps and gave a single glance back at the scene of carnage.

Lifting his ECube, he initiated a sequence. And throughout the vaults of the Sentinel Tower, eight units of HighJ explosive were primed for detonation.

Order had been restored to the town of Paphos by the time Carter stepped out into the sunlight. It blinded him momentarily as Nex and JT8 weapons trained on him and he moved warily forward, dropping his pack and lifting the ECube high for the Nex to see.

For a moment, crazy thoughts raced through Carter’s brain, but he was sure that they did not want him dead. They had taken his boy. That meant they needed something from him—and he was damned if he could work out what.

It had taken a lot of guts to trust his instincts and step out to meet a potential firing squad. But there was a game being played here and he was sick of being a pawn. Carter was no man’s pawn. He played by his own fucked-up rules.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ he bellowed.

From a large black BMW X9 with darkened titanium privacy windows stepped a Nex, dressed simply in black but without a mask. Nex wore no insignia, no signs of rank, but Carter had learnt earlier in his career that Nex had other means of identification—usually scent. She had a pale oval face and bright copper eyes. Her hair was cut short near the scalp, a spiked black wave; high cheekbones gave her face a slightly haughty look. She moved forward with an incredible grace, poised and powerful despite her lack of height. Carter could sense her physical prowess ... could sense the nature of this hunter, this predator, this killer. This beast.

‘I am, Mr Carter. Put down the ECube.’

‘Where’s my son?’

‘He is in a safe place. Put down the ECube—you have caused enough damage for one day. You have proved your point. Now come with me and nothing will happen to your little boy.’

Carter glanced up. From the BMW stepped another figure, a woman with long brown hair and sparkling eyes. She closed the BMW’s door, then moved slowly to stand beside the Nex.

She looked up then. Looked up into Carter’s snarling face.

‘I’m sorry, Carter.’

‘I wish I could say I’m not surprised, but I am. Nicky, what the
fuck
are you doing?’

‘I am not the Nicky you knew—and trusted. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Nicky is a corpse. She died alone, in agony, screaming for her long-lost lover, Jam. I am a Nex, Carter. I am a changer. A replication. Now put down the ECube, like Alexis told you to. You don’t want to prolong this agony.’

‘How many Nex are in the tower?’

‘Three hundred,’ said Alexis softly, her gaze fixed on Carter.

Carter shrugged, and thumbed the ECube detonator. Below the ground there came a shudder and the pavement shook. Several JT8s fell to their knees as if they were victims of a violent earthquake tremor. Then a collective scream rose and fire blazed up through the inside of the Sentinel Tower as the people standing outside the building sprinted for cover. Alexis and Nicky backed nervously away but Carter merely stood, face a grim mask, as the Tower shook and then started to collapse from within. Smoke billowed outwards, swamping Carter, enveloping him, a huge vapour mouth opening ringed with bone-shard teeth fashioned from the mashed and pulverised bones of hundreds of dead Nex—and then snapping shut to eat him whole.

The Sentinel Tower fell. Carter felt as though he was choking to death on dust as the force of the blast rocked him, dropping him to his knees as if he’d been slapped across the back of the head with a shovel. Coughing spasms racked him and he spat out chips of stone and concrete. He felt gloved hands grasp him. He punched out and the grasping fingers fell away. He found his feet, then scrambled away from the blast zone.

As Carter stumbled free, the Nex were waiting for him. Through the swirling dust and smoke, he saw that a ring of guns surrounded him and he slowly lifted his hands. Nicky moved forward, her face a mask of horror. ‘How could you?’ she whispered. ‘How could you kill them
all?’

And then Alexis was there, her expression unreadable. Her fist slammed into Carter’s jaw, and he was rocked by the impact. His hand came up and rubbed tenderly where he’d been hit. His stare slowly focused on Alexis’s face.

‘What the fuck have you done with my son?’ he growled.

Alexis’s copper eyes glowed. Without a word she stepped back and the JT8s waded in with stomping boots and the butts of their sub-machine guns, hammering Carter into unconsciousness and then continuing to beat at his limp body.

‘We have him,’ said Alexis into a tiny comm.

‘Will he do what we want?’ asked Nicky.

‘Yes,’ said Alexis. ‘He’ll do
whatever
we demand.’

‘In the same way as he destroyed the Sentinel Tower? Is that what we
demanded
, Alexis?’

Alexis’s stare fixed on Nicky for a while, her look cool and composed. The Nicky changer shivered. Then, without a word, the female Nex general climbed into the BMW X9. Tyres spun against concrete shards as the vehicle powered through the smoke of destruction—leaving Nicky standing and surveying the catastrophic devastation wrought by Carter’s merciless wrath.

Data log#18475 [+18512 updates]

CLASSIFIED SADT/8764/SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

DATA REQUEST 777#18475

QIII and QIV

The QuanTech Edition 3 [QIII] and Edition 4[QIV] family of Military Cubic Processors

The QIXI was the first-ever cellular processor—the prototype of an electronic mind—semi-organic, silicon-based and with a mixture of synthetic substances at its core. Via design modes and mechs, the QIII processor and the QIV which followed were totally independent pieces of hardware.

Working around a digital model of WorldCode Data, the QuanTech Edition 3 was digitally capable of incredible computing feats. A successor to the all-powerful QuanTech Edition 2 [QII] processor which runs at the heart of various Spiral Mainframes across the globe, the QIII was capable and fully compliant with all global operating systems—from UNIX to Windows it could decode way beyond current 64—and 12 8—bit architectures. The QIII was so powerful that it could decode and re-encode DNA in millionths of a second when it would take a conventional computer many hours. The QIII was at least 50,000 times faster than any current processor in development. It was destined to have ground-breaking effects on all aspects of computing, from military applications to world economics.

The pinnacle of the QuanTech 3’s development was the ability to use WorldCode Data combined with probability math—equations allowing it to successfully predict the future on the simulation of any given probable event. This feature was nearly 100% successful in prediction, and required only occasional calibration.

The QIII was destroyed when a rogue Spiral operative named Durell abused the military processor (and its subsystems) and attempted to use this all-powerful machine to take over global military systems, financial institutions and satellites, including the highly destructive Russian PredatorSAT modules.

At the time the QIII was destroyed by Spiral operative Cartervb512, it was thought that all schematics were lost/destroyed. However, subsequently, and unknown to Spiral operatives on a global scale, Durell had successfully completed the technical development of the QIV processor which in turn helped to build a ‘ Quake-machine’ , or ‘QuakeHub’ which could use natural faults in an underground network of mineral fuel lodes known as LVA to instigate quakes at specific locations anywhere throughout this LVA network. This gave Durell an extra weapon with which to attempt his world domination but, again, it was successfully smashed by Spiral operative Cartervb512 in his search for a cure for his dying woman.

Keyword SEARCH» QIII, QIV, NEX, SAD, SPIRAL_sadt, DURELL, FEUCHTER, QuakeHub, Spiral_Q, Spiral_R, SVDENSKA, CONSTANZA, PAGAN

// Also see military texts
SPIRAL
and
QUAKE.

let us () out

make () us free

free again

release us
—
traitor ()

() dark blood traitor ...

M
ongrel and The Priest crouched, huddling at the top of what had once been a wide staircase in the deserted building and staring down at the devastation in the hall below. The Nex, pinned down by Mongrel’s heavy fire, had taken up defensive positions behind pillars. The tank—with a salvo of twin shells—had destroyed the staircase.

‘Fucking monkeys,’ snorted Mongrel. ‘How dumb-ass Nex going get up steps now?’

‘They’ll probably come in through the roof,’ said The Priest softly.

‘Ahhhh! Yes, so they will.’

The firing pin of Mongrel’s gun suddenly made a frightening click. Mongrel’s gaze met The Priest’s. Behind them the other operatives had also ceased firing. Most had run out of ammunition. Those who hadn’t were down to their last few rounds.

As if sensing this, the Nex started to emerge, moving behind the protective shell of the tank. More motors whirred and the huge twin guns powered up, taking aim towards the top of the massive shattered staircase.

‘Got any last words?’ muttered Mongrel.

The Priest merely made the sign of the cross — as something big and fast shot through the opening left by the Nex tank and struck it. There was a titanic explosion as the tank spun, shedding panels of armour. The advancing Nex soldiers burst into flame and melted into pools of stinking grease—

Mongrel, The Priest and other Spiral ops cowered behind sheltering sections of wall as fire roared past them, scorching plaster. Sergeant Simmo had arrived.

Simmo was a mammoth tattooed hulk, a barrel-chested man-mountain with a shaved head, a goatee beard and fearsome bushy eyebrows. He had only limited numbers of his own teeth—and the skin of his throat bore tattoos of the names of the many men he had killed. Any other exposed skin was also heavily tattooed.

Simmo had once been a slave to bureaucracy, spending much of his early military life performing puerile pen-pushing tasks. But since the earth-ravaging quakes and the subsequent nuclear devastation that had rocked the world he had undertaken a serious re-evaluation of his life. As a result, he had changed. Simmo had woken up.

Now he strode across the rubble, dressed in his stained combats and smoking a fat cigar. His throat tattoos bulged. The man-mountain stood atop debris greased with smears of bubbling Nex fat, and placed his hands on his hips. He bellowed, ‘You here, you fucking crazy Holy Man? I believe I was summoned by the Lord—or maybe it was only by Lord knows what!’

The Priest rose slowly, and calmly patted out a small fire which glowed in the crispy strands of his beard. Mongrel leapt up, pushing past The Priest to stand at the edge of the blasted stairs. Small pieces of wood tumbled away and clattered far below.

‘What you fucking doing, crazy Sarge? You trying to blast us all to Kingdom Come?’