Golgotha Run (25 page)

The air outside was hazed with smoke. Eddie stuck his head out of the hatch,
hauled it back and examined the image imprinted on his retinas. Nothing moving
out there. Nothing alive.

Cautiously, he clambered down from the hatch, went into a crouch and scanned
his surroundings through the haze. Now that he was through the hatch he became
of a loud, low rumbling emanating from the Ship itself. Whatever provided its
motive force was obviously on line.

The cavern was a mess. The servomechanisms that had been busily shucking human
heads were a tangled, burning wreckage—the source of the smoke. There was
the smell of charred flesh from the piles of discarded empty heads.

Somebody had dropped a quantity of hi-ex down the main elevator shaft and
taken the various head-processing units out. Eddie wondered if the idea had
been to disrupt the Ship’s replenishment, before remembering that part of the
operation had been almost done in any case before he and Trix had entered to
reconfigure the nodes. Whoever had done this would have known that, or simply
didn’t care.

In any case, here and now, there didn’t seem to be any immediate threat. He
turned back, intending to return to Trix Desoto and tell her as much, and
found that the hatch had contracted shut.

Abruptly, the rumbling from the Ship changed in tone, and added several extra
harmonics to the mix. Eddie had been around enough vehicles, of various types,
in his life to recognise that several key systems had just cut in. The Ship
was in the process of prepping for actual flight.

Eddie Kalish had not the slightest idea what might happen to him, should a
starship from the future, or the past, or from some weird dimension of
wherever the fuck it was, decided to take off in an enclosed space with him
standing right beside it—and it was the considered opinion of one Eddie
Kalish that he was fucked if he was gonna wait to find out. He scrambled
through the wreckage and sloshed and crunched his way through the detritus of
shelled and emptied heads to the alcoves leading to the emergency maintenance shafts—only to find them filled
with quick-drying concrete.

The concrete was still vaguely sludgy, but not so much that there would be any
possible way through it. When the US Army Engineering Corps start throwing
construction materials around, they don’t dick about.

Behind him, the rumbling of the Ship cranked up another notch and became a
positive roar.

One chance left, then.

The pylons and the cogwheel rack that had respectively stabilised and given
purchase for the main elevator platform were a scorched and buckled, collapsed
mess, but he was able to haul himself up on them to gain some height.

Hanging from the elevator shaft itself, in the roof of the cavern, was a
length of gear-chain that remained from the mechanism that had lowered the
canisters of the Brain Train’s cargo.

Eddie Kalish launched himself for it desperately, brushed the chain with his
outflung fingers and fell back—flat-foot boosted himself against the
remains of a crumpled stanchion, managed somehow to get his hand round the
chain and then clung on for dear life.

(And it was only later, yet again, that he would work out the various
distances and dynamics, and realise that what he had done was physically
impossible. He was really going to have to get a handle on that, he thought
later—work out the limits of what his Loup-informed body was really able
to do, if only to stop all this waking up in a cold sweat the night after he
did stuff.)

Eddie hauled himself up to get a purchase with his other hand, wondering if he
really had it in him to make it up the shaft by way of a gear chain that was
already slicing into him.

Below him, the roar from the Ship ramped up yet again.

Problem solved. Eddie climbed.

Colonel Roland Grist sat on the floor in Arbitrary Base Tactical Command,
looking down numbly at the liquid seeping numbly out across the carpet from
between his legs.

The liquid, it must be said, was actually the better part of a bottle of Wild
Turkey, his fourth in the space of twenty-four hours, which had slipped from
his fingers, with which he was currently and unaccountably having some degree
of trouble.

Oh, well. He had probably had enough by this point anyway. He still had other
bottles salted away in his quarters. And the smell of it helped to counteract
the smell of the piss.

One step leading to another. Step by logical step. How could things have
gotten so far out of hand so fast? How had it all turned into shit?

The Desoto girl humiliating him the day before had been nothing new to Grist;
he had, after all spent the best part of a decade in a state of humiliation.

Jealousy amongst the powers that be in the Pentagon, that’s what it was.
Following his successes in Madagascar back in ’09, including the
depersonalization and deforestation of the entire island, the powers that be
spotted his rising star and decided to slap it down out of hand. Dishonourable discharge they’d called it, not that
Grist could see anything dishonourable in using a little napalm to sort out a
problem with local insurgents. How can you make an omelette if you can’t break
a few eggs?

Following his court martial, the CNG had welcomed him with open arms and
allowed him to carry over his army rank of colonel. He had been appointed in
Command of Arbitrary Base (Fort Dix, as it was) and its complement of
intercontinental ballistic missiles, each capable of wiping out a major city,
halfway around the globe in any direction you might like. Half a century
before, with actual superpowers standing off under the threat of Mutually
Assured Destruction, that might have been a big deal.

The fact was, however, that by the turn of the twenty-first century, the
dynamic of global conflict was shifting irrevocably to the smaller scale.
Police actions and surgical incursions were the way to go—and in none of
these was there any sensible scenario involving the annihilation of entire
major cities.

Grist had become, as the Desoto girl had reminded him, nothing more than a
glorified caretaker, taking care of stuff until such a time as there might be
a need for it again—and when that time came, of course, the stuff would be
taken from him. He wouldn’t even get a go with the button.

Then again, as if in response to their general insignificance to the world,
advances in technology had refined the stopping-power of an ICBM into
something that could be carried on the back of a roller skate. And while
people are forever saying that it’s not the size, it’s what you do with it
that counts, that’s a fucking lie and they know it. When Colonel Grist had
contemplated the relative size of his arsenal, it couldn’t but have him
feeling like a dickless fuck.

And as if to add insult to injury, the jokers had informed him that he was
responsible for a subterranean chamber containing what they called the
Artefact. Extraterrestrial in origin, they said. Most important thing in the
world they said. Second only to the… thing that the Roswell Incident was
invented to deflect attention from, they said.

And Grist had believed them. They had seemed so serious about it. Grist had
taken up his new post almost bursting with pride… and then gone down the
Shed Seven shaft to find nothing but a disused weapons repository. Nothing
inside whatsoever. His superiors had been ripping the piss out of him.
Laughing at him behind his back.

They were doing that little twirly thing with a finger to the ear, too, in his
mind.

Grist had decided, then and there, looking at nothing whatsoever, that he’d be
jiggered if he was going to be the one to crack first. For a decade he had
played along, each status report on this so-called Artefact adding another
little drop of acid to his soul. The only thing that had kept him going was the
knowledge that the bastards in the Pentagon knew he knew, and was playing them
at their own game, and that it must be driving them completely bugshit.

Evidently, it was working. Now they had stepped up the ante—sending in a
bunch of GenTech civilians to rub it in and mock him. Acting as if the so-called Artefact existed and was of supreme importance. Doing it all to mock
him and watch him squirm.

There was absolutely no other explanation, given that the so-called Artefact
simply didn’t exist.

Grist had decided to let them get on with their little farce, and left them to
it. Screw ‘em, frankly. He was just going to go off and get tanked.

After a day and light of miserable drinking in his quarters, however,
something had snapped. He just wasn’t going to take it anymore. He could see
the way before him clearly.

He had gathered together those of his men who he knew, so far as such things
can be known, were not in on the so-called Artefact joke, and informed them
that Special Forces Intelligence had reported that these GenTech guys were in
fact impostors—here to secure the Arbitrary Base nuclear arsenal in the name
of New Congolese Vengeance. He had ordered his men to take them down with all
necessary force.

He’d always been good at making stuff up off the top of his head like that,
and sending his guys in on the basis if it. It had reminded him of the good
old days.

Of course, he could never have anticipated how the GenTech guys responded to
an attack. How the hell would a bunch of play-actors and practical jokers be
so well trained and armed? There was just no way it made sense.

And then, of course, there were the filthy traitors, who had refused to follow
orders. Fortunately, before ordering those he trusted to attack the GenTech
team, Grist had contrived to secure those he did not fully trust in their
barracks huts, where a number of time-delayed cyanide capsules had taken care
of the problem nicely, thank you very much. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, one could not be expected to think of everything.

With the GenTech team fighting back so unexpectedly against his troops, and
the Arbitrary Base compound dissolving into chaos, Grist had decided that his
proper place was to be here in Tactical Command. He had arrived here, though,
to find it guarded by one of his lieutenants, a Lieutenant Butcher, who had
promptly attempted to take him into custody. Him!

Then things had gotten just a little bit confused. It was probably the drink.
The next thing Grist knew he was sitting here, the entire left side of his head
throbbing with pain, and he was somehow holding Butcher’s sidearm.

The body of Butcher lay before him, as it did now, with its head quite
comprehensively blown off.

Grist couldn’t remember firing the gun even once, let alone enough times as it
would take to inflict the damage done to Butcher. He simply had no memory of
it. The term “psychotic cleavage” surfaced through his sodden mind. Then he
forgot it.

Now Grist staggered to his feet. Something detonated outside. The ground
shook. It was time for action, and he was just the guy to take it.

The control panels in Tactical Command gave direct access to the SNARKs off in
their silo-racks. That was the stuff to give ‘em. Make the damn Congolese pay.

Through a combination of drink, psychosis and concussion sustained during his
struggle with Butcher, Colonel Grist had simply forgotten that his hastily-invented lie about the New Congolese Vengeance terrorists was a fabrication.
There had been a terrorist attack on US soil and the bastards responsible were
going to
pay!

It occurred to Grist, though, that he might need command-code clearance before
proceeding with the launch. Fortunately, Tactical Command had a satellite-hotline overriding any lockdown or communications-blackout procedure.

Grist grabbed the handset. “Get me c-in-c Special Services Operations now,” he
barked.

“
This is Special Services Operations at the Pentagon.
” A chirpy recorded voice said. “
If you require our humanitarian intervention in a territorial, religious or political dispute, please press one. If you wish to report an alleged atrocity carried out in the name of Uncle Sam by our boys overseas, please press two. For all other services, please hold the line.
”

And then the handset, for some reason, began playing the Village People
singing ‘In the Navy’. Colonel Roland Grist stood to attention, handset to his
ear, and waited for it to stop.

Eddie Kalish hauled himself from the elevator shaft. The Shed that had
enclosed it was gone, at least in terms of being a Shed, having been converted
to twisted scraps of metal sheeting spread over quite some area.

The compound of Arbitrary Base, likewise, had been converted to a battlefield
devastation of twisted, burning bodies and wreckage. Eddie was reminded of the
attempted hijacking of the Road Train, back when he had first met Trix
Desoto—but ramped up to the nth degree. Military-spec weaponry and tactics versus
the enhanced defences and armaments GenTech had brought along for this
operation.

The Mobile Command Centre was totalled. Everybody Eddie could see was dead.
There were rather less soldiers than he remembered among the corpses—and
this gave Eddie Kalish pause for thought. If there were less dead soldiers
then that meant, of course, that there was a better chance of living ones still
knocking about.

Eddie made his way through the wreckage, senses alive for any sight or sound
of movement or life, ready to cut and run at any moment.

It was a bit depressing, now he came to thing of it, that his life contrived
to place him in this precise situation over and over again. He wondered if
there was somebody he could complain to about it.

In the end, as it happened, he found a sign of life—but from a different and
unexpected direction, and far less welcome than even some surviving Delta
Marine with an M37 and an attitude about how many of his friends had been
killed would have been. There was a roar overhead and a VTOL descended like the
wrath of God—if God had happened to have access to next-generation VTOL
technology and was really, really pissed off.