"It's a dead end," snapped Pippa, hands hovering over a control dial. The Zeppelin3 shifted uneasily, up and down, in strong rising under-ice air currents. It was a struggle to keep it steady.
They floated in a high but tight tunnel, where the Zeppelin3's flanks brushed against potentially sharp ice. There came several squeaking sounds, and she exchanged glances with Franco and Betezh, who'd moved forward, a look of acute nervousness on his horrifically scarred face.
"Problem?" he growled.
"It's through there," said Pippa.
"Stand back," said Franco. "We'll blast our way through!" He beamed the sort of lunatic beam which had got him locked up.
Pippa snorted. "You might bring the damn roof down."
Franco glanced up, but saw only the underside of the Zeppelin's huge bulk. "That might happen anyway," he said, painfully aware that billions of tonnes of glacial ice squatted just above the intruders, a trap for the unwary treasure hunter, a Rockfall for the reckless.
Franco primed the Kekra Mini-Halo Missiles.
"No," said Betezh, placing his hand on Franco's arm. "I've got a bad feeling about this, buddy. A real bad feeling."
"Trust me," said Franco, voice impossibly soft. Ice creaked and cracked above, below, all around. They all
felt
the glacier shift, move, and settle, like a huge dinosaur resting slowly back to die. He flicked several switches. Motors whirred. From somewhere deep below them, there came a subtle
whine
.
"We might die," whispered Pippa.
Franco stared at her. "This is for Keenan," he said.
She gave a nod, and Franco fired twin missiles into the heart-ice of the glacier...
Keenan and Snake stood, back to back, weapons primed in grim, steady hands, breath smoking in the cold of the domed chamber. Gold flickered across the mammoth arched ceiling as minute changes in the
map
integrated and meshed; a digital update.
The Cryo Medics were screaming, charging... but their mammoth noise was suddenly superseded by a high scream which blasted through the chamber. Weapons rattled as they were realigned and eyes fixed on Keenan and Snake, cold eyes behind frosted gas-masks, and the eyes were brittle with ice, not an ice of frozen water, but of frozen compassion, chilled empathy, solidified humanity. There was no give there; the Cryo Medics would kill anything without remorse.
Suddenly, fire blossomed across the underside of the dome with a crackle of detonation, and ice rained down in chunks and cubes, splinters and knives. A hundred Cryo Medics were crushed by a hotel-sized cube of compressed ice that
whumped
into the floor and left smears of strawberry topping. Yet more Cryo Medics were slammed by spears of ice, several pierced through their open, screaming mouths and impaled, quivering and twitching, releasing their bowels onto the gore-slippery floor. From the rage of billowing fire emerged the Zeppelin3, slamming into the cavern with heavy 7.77mm guns yammering, dropping through ice and smoke and fire and raining debris, skidding around in a tight air-arc and levelling guns at the suddenly panicked and cowardly Cryo Medics...
Guns roared.
Keenan and Snake backed away, their own guns slamming into the Cryo Medics, who were suddenly pincered between two opposing forces. A hundred went down in a heavy swathe of spent ammunition, and the rest buckled like foil, panic slamming through ranks like a bush fire. They ran, sprinting for the many exits from the dome chamber, weapons forgotten, an urgency for survival overtaking brains. The Zeppelin3 expertly tracked them, guns pounding, barrels glowing hot like the embers in a fire. Cryo Medics were smashed in the back, hearts and lungs punched through chests, bodies splintered and torn, dancing like ragged marionettes on the way to the frozen floor. Blood spurted, fountained, ran in streams, described webs of splayed crimson, tattooed Rorschach patterns against the ice, curiously symmetrical in a simple artistic splendour.
The remaining Medics fled the chamber. The guns silenced, smoke rising from glowing barrels.
The Zeppelin3 lowered, gently, as if on silent wires, and this Deus Ex Machine turned to focus on Keenan and Snake, still tense, guns aimed at this huge silent vehicle, eyes narrowed and waiting for yet another explosion of enemy guns -
"Keenan!" boomed Franco, and Keenan felt a huge weight lift from his chest, from his mind, from his heart. He uncoiled from his defensive crouch, pushed shoulders back and, for the first time in what felt an eternity, smiled.
A ladder clattered over the side of the platform, and Franco leapt out before it touched the ice, swinging and swaying as he descended, one sandal flapping on greased rungs. He dropped to the ice, and held out his arms. "Keenan, babe!"
Keenan grinned, stepping forward, and hugging Franco. "You mad little fucker. How the hell did you get
that,"
he eyed the huge Zeppelin3, "so far down
here?
"
"Bombs," beamed Franco. "Lots of bombs. An orgy of bombs! You're looking well! A bit pounded, a bit bedraggled, but well, my man."
"And you look... like a porn-star nurse."
Franco stared down at his tight-fitting nurse attire, then grinned even wider as Keenan rolled his neck and shoulders, pulled out his small silver case, and rolled a cigarette with Widow Maker tobacco.
"Hot damn, I forgot how sexy and chic I appear to your average common mortal man." He coughed. In a whisper, he added, "I don't normally dress like this, y'know?"
"Hey." Keenan held up a hand, watching as Pippa, Fizzy, Shazza, Betezh and Olga all trooped down the ladder, one by one, the whole frame shaking madly under Olga's immense weight. "Each to his own, buddy. Different cultures, different customs, yeah?"
"It's still damn good to see you." Franco punched Keenan's shoulder, and Keenan groaned, touching the place tenderly.
"Just lay off the violence. I feel like Olga stomped my head." He eyed the group of ragtag nurses and bedraggled squaddies. Snake stood to one side, uneasy now, realising the odds had switched, and were somewhat against him.
Pippa stepped close to Keenan. "We came for you."
Keenan nodded, lighting his smoke. "Thank you." He glanced around. "Thanks, all of you. I can see by your appearance you've all been through the wars; but we'll have time for swapping adventures soon enough." His eyes narrowed. "Where's Mel?"
"She died," said Franco, voice a little strangled.
Keenan placed his hand on Franco's shoulder. "I'm sorry about that, buddy. Real sorry. She'd been through a lot of shit with us; she was a part of our team. One of us. Combat K."
"Yes," said Franco, voice unnaturally quiet. He had lost his usual bubbling bounciness. "She was my true love."
Keenan took a deep breath, pushing it from his mind. He had other priorities; like their impending slaughter, and the desecration of the planet during the last thousand years. "Now," he glanced up, "we have to follow the map. We have a direction. We have a goal. A purpose."
"We do?" said Pippa, moving close, voice barely more than a whisper. She was close enough to lean forward, to kiss him. Keenan stared deep into her cold grey eyes, saw the insane tangle of hatred and love, or gentleness and violence, and he smiled. He drew on his cigarette, and Pippa gave a little cough that made his smile widen. It was always the little things that touched him.
"We're gonna find the bastard who did this to the planet; to Sick World. He's called VOLOS." Keenan crouched, touching the ice floor. "He lives deep down, beneath the planet crust, deep within the rock. He helped create the junks, or rather, deviated an existing species into what the junks became. They were once a proud, fine race, a species of humility and love and culture. He knows
everything
about the junks. He knows their weakness. And, well, VOLOS twisted this place. Twisted the Junkala. He made Sick World, and the sick deviants who inhabit it. VOLOS changed the doctors, the nurses, the patients - turned them into the sorrowful horrors we have all faced."
"So we're going down?" said Franco.
"No jokes," said Pippa, glancing back at him.
Franco's face was straight. "Would I?"
She laughed. "Yeah, deviant, you would."
"Hey, that's a gross misrepri... misrapre... a
wrongful
presentation of my intentions, that is. So it is."
Snake moved forward, still uneasy, his gun
almost
facing the ground as if worried he might suddenly be pounced upon. He glanced at Keenan, and at the array of hardware bristling before him. The odds had well and truly shifted.
"What about me?"
Keenan stared at him. Something hard and cold in his heart pushed to the surface, but he forced it away. His senses screamed at him to put a bullet in Snake's brain. But he could not. Would not.
"You've got a reprieve, fucker. For now."
"Do you want my gun?"
"Not yet. Just make sure you don't wave it near me, or I might get the wrong idea and blow your motherfucking head off. Yeah?"
"Yeah, Keenan."
Keenan stared at the ceiling. Then around, at the reunited squaddies. "Well, guys. It's time to go to work."
Keenan sat cross-legged on the floor in the exact centre of the chamber. Surrounding him stood the remnants of Combat K, battered, bruised, but defiant and hard and unyielding.
Keenan closed his eyes, felt himself drifting, felt the pulse of alien blood in his veins. And when he opened his eyes he was alone and this place was a million years distant. Cold ice-smoke drifted across the floor, and everything seemed... new, gleaming, bright. He stared up, tracing golden line through the ice, and it shifted subtly and rotated and he felt something in his mind go
click
and then was back in the present, and he could see both images superimposed and he knew. Knew the way. The way down to VOLOS...
"Follow me," he said, standing.
"Where are we going?"
Keenan took a deep breath, eyeing each soldier one by one by one. "Below this chamber lies the Asylum. A thousand years ago it was the secret project of Sick World, the deformed child locked in the cellar, the embarrassment brushed under the rug. When things started going wrong, going
bad,
they tried to put it right. But because of
money,"
he spat the word, "and
sponsors,
they kept on going, kept on trying to make Sick World the premier service for getting people and aliens well; and taking their hard earned dollars in the process."
"But some went mad," said Pippa, eyebrows raised.
"I'm not sure. But I'm warning you now, whatever's down there, down in the Asylum, what they called Ward 1 - well, it's going to be a thousand times worse than anything else we've experienced. They sealed it off, in the end. Before Sick World was evacuated. They sealed it off and left everyone in it to die... deep beneath the world, beneath the layers of strata... and you only do that for one reason. When there's no other way. Now. I understand if anyone, and I mean
anyone
, chooses to stay up here, near the surface. You can return to the last SLAM ship, protect it against deviant nurses, whatever. Nobody should have to witness what we're going to suffer beneath Sick World's supposed
normality."
Keenan didn't look at Franco, but could feel the ginger squaddie's eyes boring into his skull. He turned, finally, when Franco made a little strangled sound, like a cat in a bag tossed into a canal.
"You mean we're going down
into
an age-old mental hospital? A big underground one? One full of loonies?"
"Yeah, a very secretive and a very
bad
one."
"And you got all that from the sparkly roof map?"
"Let's just say I was inspired," whispered Keenan.
Franco paused. It was a painful pause; like a fart in a lift, or bared bollocks at a wedding ceremony. Finally, he said, "But I'm only a little fella," his voice the squeakiest of mewling mewls.
"That's what I mean," said Keenan, not unkindly. "There's no shame in staying behind to protect our single exit path from the planet; after all, it could become a bigger warzone up there than... the deviated place down here, beneath. Under our boots. And in the darkest recesses of our minds."
Franco considered this, and met the gaze of Fizzy, Shazza, then Olga; he connected with Snake, and Betezh, and finally with Pippa, who gave him a little smile, an honest smile, which was a rarity to see on her cruel, snarling face. Franco puffed out his chest, and took a deep breath. He noted with some pleasure that Betezh looked deeply uncomfortable, squirming beneath his scarred skin, for it was Betezh who had been instrumental in breaking Franco's spirit at the Mount Pleasant home for the "mentally challenged". Betezh had done a lot of bad things. He carried shame like a badge.
"I'm coming with you," said Franco.
"It'll be dangerous, and mad," growled Keenan.
"Hey, they don't call me Franco 'Kick Danger in the Balls' Haggis for nothing, you know, mate. I'm with you; all of you. Right to the fucking end, and beyond. Just show me where to sign." He bared his teeth; more in horror than smile.
"Good man!" Keenan slapped him on the back. "Pippa?"