The machine gave a low hum, a jolt of massive power, and inside there came a whirlwind of gold and snowflakes and the machine started to dance, rattling backwards and forwards on heavy iron legs and inside the Cryo Locum was screaming and wailing like a man about to die... which he was.
Keenan took several steps back, and glanced over his shoulder. The hundreds of Cryo Medics were staring, transfixed, at their leader trapped in the machine. They stared, dumbly, and then, kicking into lazy gear, three rushed forward and grabbed at the control panel -
But too late.
Power, huge and raw and unrestrained, crackled at the summit of the machine and flooded down through the gold dust and swirling organic snowflakes and
Cryo Locum
himself, and he screamed and screamed, pounding at the interior until there came a sudden, vast, explosive
squelch.
Keenan turned. The Cryo Medics were staring at him. They were close, now.
He smiled, and leapt, and slammed a right hook, ducked a return blow, dived at a second Medic, both fists pounding its mask, then he took its machine gun and sent a stream of ice bullets mowing into the ranks of enemy before him -
Flesh splattered, bullets whining and drilling holes in torsos, legs and heads. "Snake!" screamed Keenan, and he saw, perhaps fifty feet away, Snake struggling viciously with five Medics, punching and kicking until he, too, held a gun. Weapons roared, and Cryo Medics were shot out and up, bodies riddled with ice bullets as Snake and Keenan worked grimly towards one another, guns yammering, barrels glowing blue cold with ice round chill until they stood, back to back, and for a moment the hundreds of Cryo Medics backed away, forming a circle around the two men -
They ceased firing, Snake with only one mag left, Keenan already on the Dead Man's Click.
"We're fucked," said Snake from the corner of his mouth.
"Don't be so pessimistic." Keenan eyed the Cryo Medics warily, wearily, and saw the door to the machine behind them open. Several Medics started laboriously shovelling out the chunked remains of their recent leader. "I'm out of rounds," he said.
"I've thirty."
"Then we are fucked," agreed Keenan.
A low growl echoed around the domed chamber, and Keenan and Snake stared hard at the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of twisted mutated Sick World enemies before them. The combined growl grew in volume, ferocity, and then pace, rising almost like a war chant and Keenan's eyes searched vainly for any weapon within reach -
As the mass of Cryo Medics seemed to
bunch
with energy, fury, and intent.
As one, they charged.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NIGHT NURSE
Franco stood, leaning against the rail, watching the snowy world speed beneath him. Pippa approached.
"We're nearly there. Another ten minutes."
Franco nodded, and glanced back towards a frozen forest zipping beneath the huge, near-silent Zeppelin3. "It's beautiful here, Pippa. Have you taken the time to look around? To admire the scenery?"
"Yeah, but something went badly wrong. That's why it's called Sick World."
"It stinks of Man, not God," said Franco, mood turning sour.
"We'll see."
Pippa went back to the airship's controls, and Betezh was the next to approach Franco. He slapped the small pugilist on the back, and guffawed down his ear. "How's it going Franco old buddy old boy what do you think of the gig so far, eh? Quite a turn up for the books this place being populated by medical deviants an' all, eh lad?"
Franco glanced at Betezh, at the Frankenstein's Monster stitching that ran up one side of his head. Franco sighed, weighted under Betezh's enthusiasm. Betezh was a hard man to put down, a seemingly eternal optimist and, some would say, just as mad as Franco... only on a slightly different plane.
"Yeah. It's a bit crazy," smiled Franco.
Betezh changed tactics, and leant alongside Franco, staring out across the snow. "I'm sorry about Melanie," he said, after a while.
Franco nodded.
"It was quick," said Betezh.
Franco nodded again.
"Her death, I mean."
Franco frowned. "That's kind of what I assumed you meant."
Betezh sighed. "Yeah. Having a whole fucking hospital come crashing down on your head, BAM! straight in the back of the skull, boy, that had to hurt like a bastard, all those bricks tumbling over you, bouncing on you, crushing you, and if you were real unlucky then the mushroom clouds of dust would choke you, invading your lungs like a cancer and slowly suffocating you to death, cutting off your oxygen supply until you choked and choked and choked and hell, yes, maybe that didn't happen but instead she was squashed, trapped under the rubble and slowly starving to death and what chance would there be for a rescue party, eh? I ask you, eh?"
Betezh stared at Franco, whose face was far from friendly.
Betezh coughed. "Yes. Well. What I mean to say, is, well, it must have been quick."
"Betezh, fuck off and leave me alone with my thoughts."
"Yes buddy, no problem, whatever you say." Whistling loudly, and with hands thrust in pockets, Betezh wandered away and Franco spat over the side of the Zeppelin3, but no matter how much he hawked and snorted and regurgitated, he could not rid himself of the sour taste of failure.
"There!" pointed Pippa.
"Where?"
"There!"
"There's nothing bloody
there,"
snapped Franco, staring at the trees, the ice, the snow, more ice, a bit more snow, and a snowy wall of a glacier which blended in nicely with the rest of the snow and ice.
"Inside the glacier," said Pippa.
They stood for a while, the Zeppelin3 bobbing on gentle eddies of cold air. After a while longer, Franco said, "Oh," and they stared some more. "You mean, like,
inside
that there huge trillion billion million tonne glacier?"
"It would appear so," said Pippa.
"You see any tunnels?"
"Nothing so convenient, mate."
"I have an idea." Franco brightened, and he turned. "Right," he shouted, gaining the attention of Fizzy, Shazza and Betezh. Pudson stayed with his odd head in his warped hands, his desolation and despair a tangible thing. "I want everybody to move to the
back
of the airship."
Everyone stared at him.
"Go on then!" he shouted. "They don't call me bloody Franco 'Bright Idea' Haggis for nothing, you know."
"Franco, what's the plan?" Pippa gripped his arm.
"It's a surprise."
"What kind of fucking surprise?" she snapped.
"Hey, trust me." He winked. Pippa groaned, and released her hold. "Just don't mess this up. We're a long way from home, and Keenan needs our help."
"Hey, they don't call me Franco 'Lucky Bastard' Haggis for..."
"I know, I know."
Franco moved to the controls, and familiarised himself with the myriad of dials, sliders, wheels, levers and buttons. Then he stared ahead, grinned, released a deep breath, and muttered, "Keenan, baby, we're coming to get you."
In the subterranean gloom there came a
boom
like the colliding of worlds, and several plato-penguins standing by the side of the underground lake waddled across ice and plunged into the almost freezing pool. They bobbed for a moment, looking up through surreal under-ice light, and watched as a huge crack jigged and jagged across the ceiling. There came another
boom,
and the ceiling caved in with a million tonnes of ice crashing down in a teeming shower. Gradually, the icefall slowed, and from the eerie glowing tunnel emerged the huge, ominous shape of the Zeppelin3, cruising silent, the bulky airship filling the confines of the tunnel like a well-engineered piston.
"There's a huge cavern!" yelled Franco, back to his terror-stricken colleagues. Only a madman would bring an airship beneath the ice.
"Cavern cavern
cavern
," echoed the cavern. "CAVERN CAVERN AVERN, ERN ERN ERN ERN." Franco blushed, for here was a man who did not readily like the sound of his own voice. Quieter, this time, he said, "Pippa, are those Gordon's Military Flamethrowers charged?"
"Yes," came her sombre response. She appeared, superficially at least, to be in a less than fine mood.
"Rasta billy!"
Pippa strode forward, glancing up at the dangerous and teetering roof of the internal cavern. "Franco!" she hissed. "When you said you had a plan, I didn't realise it meant nuking the fuck out of the glacier, following a series of dodgy ready-to-collapse internal tunnels, then flaming your way through the rest of the fucking place!"
"Oh? Didn't you?" he placed a hand against Pippa's chest, the flat of his palm outwards, as a warning. "Stand back now girl, this is a dangerous place and certainly no place for a little lass like yourself."
"I might be a lass, Franco, but you're an
ass.
This is
dangerous!"
"You think I don't know that?" She stared into his eyes, and beyond the swirl of madness saw concern, and sincerity, and hope. He gave a deep sigh. "I used to work the mines for CB," he said, eyes misting, "a long time ago. I know about tunnels and caves, fractures and faults. We're OK." He glanced at the ceiling. "For now."
"OK," breathed Pippa. "As long as you know what you're doing."
"I've already lost Mel," said Franco, quietly. "I'm not about to let Keenan, or you, go the same way."
Pippa nodded, and retreated down the ice-slippery deck of the Zeppelin3. Engines gave a drone of power, and they floated forward, and
down,
into the cavern. Franco had been correct in his predictions. It was big. No.
BIG.
So big the Zeppelin3 was like an ant in a football stadium.
They sank towards the vast, ice-chunk filled lake, stagnant, still, and drifted across an icy, blue-tinged darkness. The silence was awesome. Smoke billowed from the Zeppelin3's exhaust. Occasionally, there came a distant cracking or creaking sound, which snapped like sudden machine-gun blasts through the eerie gloom. But then, gradually, stillness and silence, would return to this vast endless subterranean space.
"It's wonderful," breathed, Franco, almost to himself. Hs eyes were pinned wide in childhood awe. His lips wet from eager anticipation. "Wow," he said, staring at natural ice formations not witnessed for a million years.
"Just a shame you had to blast your way in," snorted Betezh from the back of the airship. "Nothing quite like destroying a million years of sculptured ice. Nothing like deforming Nature to give a man a good appetite for breakfast."
"Ach, shut your face," snapped Franco, and focused on the co-ordinate compass. Not far now. Just a single kilometre... east, and
down."
He moved to Pippa's side, his breath steaming, his deviant nurse uniform crackling with frost. He shivered. It was cold. Damned cold. He touched his beard, which was frozen stiff, each bristle a tiny icicle.
"I hope Keenan's OK," said Pippa, and Franco read the pain in her eyes. She still felt for him. Hell, she still loved him; but Franco knew this was a sore topic, an insanity yo-yo bouncing between love and hate, madness and calm, death and life. And all it took was a swift tug to send it careering in another direction again; possibly with very bad results.
Franco sighed. "Yeah. Me too. I miss me old buddy. We've been through some shit together, me and Keenan." He glanced at Pippa. "The three of us, in fact. Hey, you remember that alien AI wire, the Tangled? Down in that bunker? Just before we were..."
"I remember," said Pippa, her voice a little too tart, her tone hinting at disapproval. She relaxed a little, hands on the controls, guiding the Zeppelin3 down. A tiny blip on an analogue monitor showed their progress.
Franco pointed. "That uses magnetic bands," he said.
"What do you mean?"
Franco shrugged. "The monitor. It's not electronic, like we're used to. It's using Sick World's magnetic field for navigation. It's variable, to an infinite degree. Unique. I've never seen anything like it."
"So this planet's weird? Despite the obvious, of course."
"Yes, it's damn and bloody odd," said Franco. "I've seen several thousand different designs for navigation; but never anything like this." On a whim, he pulled out his PAD and tried to boot the little machine. It gave a flat zap, and refused to light up.
"You think it might be the strange magnetic field?"
"Yes. There's way too much interference. The PADs were designed to operate in any environment... but they can't handle it here. The environment isn't natural."
"So it's a created thing?"
Franco gave a deaths-head grin. "We're about to find out, lover." He patted her arse.
Pippa stared straight ahead. "Franco?"
"Yeah, sweetie?"
"Touch my arse again, and I'll surgically remove your fingers."
"OK, sweetie."
They dropped into the silence, and the ice.