Warhead (32 page)

It was about the size of a small car and seemed to be wrapped in thick black polythene.

‘Is that it?’ grunted Carter.

‘Is brain, not face of fucking supermodel,’ snapped Mongrel. Then his eyes widened. ‘Shit. There.’ He pointed to the small black case attached to the side of the HUB. ‘Alien artefact.’

‘It has gyroscopic floats,’ said Simmo, puffing on his cigar. The huge sergeant dropped to his knees and peered close. ‘Also has K12 alloy permeable casing. I can get the cover off—looks like basic HighJ payload.’ The Sarge removed his jacket and stood bare-chested, muscles rippling. Outside, in the quadrangle, snow started to fall once more.

‘That’ll slow down the choppers.’

‘But not the infantry,’ growled Carter as five Nex appeared. Carter’s weapon bucked in his hands and bullets hurtled from the workshop’s doorway. Two Nex were hammered from their feet, and the rest retreated under covering fire. Ancient blackened brickwork shattered and Carter ducked back, slamming shut the thick steel door with his boot. He peered through the grimy windows.

‘Not good,’ said Mongrel.

‘Just buy me some time! The Sarge sort this out in a jiffy.’ Simmo had produced a small leather case and removed several small tools. He dropped to his belly and reached over the side of the pit containing the plastic-sheeted HUB.

‘You good at this?’ asked Carter, his gaze searching warily for more Nex.

‘Ten years in bomb squad,’ said Simmo, blue cigar smoke pluming up from the HUB’s supporting chassis struts. His voice was calm, soothing. He threw something behind him which clattered. Carter and Mongrel stared down at a battered length of casing. Then they moved to crouch at opposite sides of the window.

More Nex appeared, firing as they came. Carter and Mongrel shot through the glass, their bullets flying across the quadrangle to kick tiny showers of powdered red dust from ancient brickwork.

‘You got some 15q snub-nosed pliers?’ came Simmo’s disembodied voice.

‘No.’

‘We’ve got two minutes before this baby blows.’

‘Ahh.’

‘Rogowski should have detonated this in the first place!’ muttered Mongrel.

‘Yeah, well, he wanted to preserve his place in Spiral to the end,’ said Carter. ‘Make sure we were all dead and buried, the traitorous piece of shit.’

‘Damn and bloody bollocks,’ cursed The Sarge from the pit.

Mongrel fired off a full magazine across the quadrangle. They could hear choppers circling through the falling snow.

‘What is it?’ Carter moved across to crouch beside Simmo. Sweat was dripping from the huge man’s forehead, running across his facial tattoos and making the tattoo script at his throat gleam.

‘Negative wiring. I seen this before, a long time ago. So has Rogowski. He knew I might try this; he trying to trick me.’

‘And has he?’

‘No!’

Simmo grinned, and snipped a green wire. There was a barely audible blip as some connection was triggered.

‘Was that good?’ asked Carter slowly. Then he saw Simmo’s eyes, and he knew that it was
not
good. In fact, it was as far from fucking good as it could ever be.

‘Ha, ha, lads. Simmo have little problem here.’

Mongrel moved to Simmo’s prostrate form. ‘What is it?’

The thumping of rotors was getting louder. Suddenly, a hail of mini-gun bullets pounded through the steel-sheeting roof ten metres to the group’s right, making it rattle and dance.

There was an awful heart-stopping pause. More bullets hammered from across the quadrangle. ‘They corner us,’ spat Mongrel.

‘What’s wrong, Sarge?’ said Carter quietly, coolly. He could hear the scything whine of engines far above. A chopper was coming around for a second sweep.

‘I cut wire. Rogowski pulled double bluff on me. Bastard. Simmo now acting as a circuit bridge. If I let go, the whole fucking lot detonate—and we’ll go with it.’

‘How can we bridge it and get you away?’ said Carter.

‘We cannot.’

‘You sure?’

Simmo met Carter’s gaze, and Carter saw that there was peace there. A final, chilling peace.

‘I am sure, my friend.’

Another stream of bullets exploded through the roof, smashing a line across the floor. Several hummed past Carter’s face and he threw himself down, cursing foully.

‘Simmo!’ hissed Mongrel.

Pinned in place, unable to leave the bomb circuit, Simmo had taken three rounds: one in the back of a shoulder blade and two bullets that had flattened on ricochet, one striking just above his kidneys and the other near his spine.

Simmo, however, showed no signs of pain. He lay, blood flowing from his three wounds, cigar stump still clamped between his teeth. His head turned and his dark-eyed stare met Mongrel’s, and then Carter’s.

‘Get out of here,’ he growled, chewing his cigar.

‘We can’t leave you,’ said Carter.

More bullets roared outside, and Mongrel shot off another full magazine in response. He swapped mags swiftly, letting the empty one fall clattering against the floor tiles.

Snow was settling across Simmo’s shaved head, carried in through the holes in the bullet-riddled roof.

‘You will,’ said Simmo calmly. ‘Simmo here hold the fortress, you be sure.’

‘We not let you do that,
pizda
,’ snapped Mongrel. ‘We love you too much, grumpy old bastard that you is! Just tell us how bridge the circuit,
dolboy’eb!’

‘Can’t do that.’ Simmo reached over, grabbed back his H&K from Carter, then hefted the weapon thoughtfully. ‘Get the fuck out of here, you buggers, before I shoot you myself!’ He coughed then, and Carter saw the blood staining his teeth. ‘Go on! You only have a minute—then we are all dog meat!’

Carter and Mongrel stared uncertainly at one another.

‘So much for rescuing the HUB!’ snorted Mongrel.

‘Fuck the HUB,’ snarled Carter. ‘Simmo, let go of the circuit—we’ll take our chances. Maybe Rogowski was bluffing you again. Thought he’d take you out with his final blast...’

‘That noise was a terminal cut-in,’ said Simmo slowly. ‘You not bluff that kind of thing. It
integral.
But The Sarge
do
have one final request for you.’

‘Anything,’ said Carter.

‘Light my cigar, there’s a good lad.’

Carter and Mongrel sprinted out through a low doorway as Nex came pouring across the quadrangle and into the workshop where Simmo let fly with his H&K until he ran out of ammo.

Bullets smashed into Simmo’s twitching body and his blood flooded across the tiled floor.

And between plumes of blue cigar smoke his teeth gritted in a tight nasty smile as his fingers twitched in a shaking spasm—and cut the connection to the bomb.

HighJ fury blasted the HUB and pulverised Simmo’s bleeding body and the bodies of thirty attacking Nex soldiers. Nanoseconds later it ripped the roof from the workshop and melted stone and flesh alike in a massive eruption of purple fire.

There came a click, then a soft whine.

And the whole of the SpiralGRID closed down.

Sonia could feel herself shivering under the multiple dark-hole eyes of the guns. She calmed her breathing, creating a steady pulse which soothed her mind, body and soul. Yes, she was going to die. So at last the pain—and the struggle—would be over.

The baying noise of the crowd in the execution yard faded. Gone were the shouted questions of the press, gone was the annoying sound of Judge Ronald’s irritating voice.

All faded into a hissing white noise ...

The ten Nex, dark-clad, emotionless, lifted their 13mm NailGuns. They were huge, brutal weapons, quite cumbersome and impractical in a battle situation where their weight made them more of a liability than an asset. But they were ideal for the purposes of execution: nobody was shooting back then, and their massive stopping power made damned sure that the target wasn’t going to get up.

Judge Ronald Hamburger’s voice echoed tinnily over a tannoy.

‘Prepare for the execution!’

The crowd cheered.

‘Firing squad, check your weapons!’

The crowd brayed.

‘Firing squad, safety switches off!’

The crowd
roared.

‘Firing squad ... fire!’

The ten NailGuns coughed, bucking in the gloved hands of the masked firing squad. Nails shot from the dark-eye muzzles but the solid streams of metal roared not towards Sonia J but at—the crowd.

The gathered paparazzi, cameras and microphones at the ready, were scythed like wheat under a glittering black blade, ripped asunder to lie dying and dead, torn into strips of raw bloody flesh. And Judge Ronald Hamburger, who had turned to flee as the Nex firing squad turned its guns on the watching people crammed into the execution yard, was shot brutally in the back as he put on an excellent arm-pumping example of a sprint towards the exit.

The huge guns stuttered to a halt and a terrible silence filled the yard that now reeked of cordite. Groans arose from heaps of bodies as blood pooled and trickled through kill channels which had drained away the life of thousands of previous execution victims.

Slowly, Sonia J opened her eyes. Her nostrils twitched at the gun smoke. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she whispered as she surveyed the carnage: the twitching bodies, the pools of blood glistening under cold skies.

The Nex turned towards her at the sound of her voice. ‘Are you going to kill me now?’ she whispered.

Before any of the Nex could speak, there was a blast of HighJ explosive and a huge hole appeared in the wall of the execution yard. Massive chunks of concrete spat outwards, scattering across the ground and leaving a portal to freedom ...

Suddenly, gloved hands were on Sonia’s arm. ‘This way, Miss J.’

‘Why didn’t you kill me?’ she asked softly.

The Nex looked down with cold copper eyes. ‘We are part of your organisation, Miss J. We are a part of the REBS. Now, if you please, this way—quickly. It will only be moments before Nex soldiers arrive—
other
Nex soldiers—with helicopters and tanks.’

Sonia was led to the smoking remains of the wall and ducked through the jagged portal. A sleek alloy Manta Trans-G was waiting, its engines hissing softly, on the square beyond. The group clambered up the recessed steps into the small fighter’s hold and slipped their hands through restraining straps. A Trans-G was commonly used for fast infiltration, for the placement of troops behind enemy lines, and for the drop-off of special-force squads. In this case, it was being used as an escape module.

The Manta’s engine howled as the craft lifted vertically. Suddenly, Nex poured from the breach in the execution yard’s wall, guns yammering in gloved hands.

The Manta banked and lifted with amazing agility, easily escaping the hostile Nex bullets.

Inside the Manta, Sonia J had gone white. ‘Thank God,’ she said, shaking her head as sobs racked her body, a release of the suppressed emotions that she had been holding tight.

Carter and Mongrel had their heads down, sprinting hard as the explosion rocked the very ground under their boots. They skidded to a halt on the snow, glancing back—and then at one another.

‘He can’t be dead,’ growled Mongrel.

‘We all die,’ said Carter.

‘Not Simmo! It not in his nature.’

‘We all die,’ repeated Carter. His eyes glazed for a moment as distant memories threatened to overwhelm him. Then he slammed his hand against Mongrel’s back. ‘Come on, or we’ll be the next monkeys to shuffle off our mortal coil.’

‘The only coil
I
willing to shuffle off is coil up whore’s
pizda!
Come on, Carter, this way down arse-tight alleyway.’ Mongrel turned right, and they pounded down a narrow brick tunnel which stank so badly of rats that Carter held his breath as he ran. Swarms of slick vermin scattered out of his way, darting along ancient cracked gutters as the two men stampeded past. Several filthy rodents stopped to watch with glittering dark eyes.

Mongrel led Carter down a flight of steps into an old basement, and within minutes they were working their way through a series of underground tunnels packed full of battered galvanised pipes, pitted with rust, many of them broken and leaking streamers of slime to the black concrete floor.

After ten minutes of struggling through the subterranean chambers and narrow shafts, Carter, who at this point was hauling himself up onto a ledge covered with orange slime, finally muttered, ‘Where exactly are we going, Mongrel? This is some fucking escape route, my friend.’

‘There thousands of Nex waiting for us out there,’ said Mongrel, one hand clamping hold of Carter’s wrist and helping to haul his friend up. ‘And now GRID is down—we fucked, Carter, we fucked bad. I think we go and pick up your Comanche, yes? We have secret rendezvous LZ set up—way outside London. All the DemolSquads have instructions to head there in case of bad shit going down. London too hot now for missions; just too dangerous.’

‘You mean we’re running away?’

‘We regroup,’ said Mongrel gently. He looked down into the part-flooded chamber from which they had just emerged. In the black water, streaked with glimmers of oil, rats with glossy spiked coats glided. ‘They broke our back, Carter, despite our efforts. Just like man stomping on rat. We need get out of this shit hole, we re-form, we gather strength together; then we attack one last time.’ Mongrel nodded to himself.