"Yeah, Kee?"
"Get that airship primed. We're going in. We're gonna need lots of missiles, lots of guns..." he smiled wryly, "and a big fucking sense of humour."
"I'm on it, boss."
Keenan watched the ragtag squad climbing the ladder, until he stood alone on the ice amidst chilled corpses of massacred Cryo Medics. He stared again at the shifting map, and saw again the imprint of VOLOS's face melded into the contact points, the contour lines, the geographical features of mountain and lake and valley. Instinctively, he realised VOLOS was a part of this place, a part of this world; as old as the rocks, the trees, the ice, the deserts, the mountains.
VOLOS was, perhaps, the greatest foe they had ever faced.
"I'm coming for you, fucker," said Keenan, stamping out his cigarette. In grim silence, he climbed the swinging ladder.
PART III
THIS IS HARDCORE
CHAPTER TWELVE
PSYCHOIATRY
Through ancient ice tunnels they cruised, silent, reverent, passing through halls of ice lit by distant eerie light, sparkling blue and white, filtered through towering cliffs of ice, through walls of snow, through chilled stalactites and waterfalls locked in stasis for a thousand years. Keenan, Franco and Pippa leant on the Zeppelin3's rails, breath smoking, eyes shifting uneasily as occasional cracks echoed through the vast tunnels, the gargantuan halls, the blue tinged caverns of a perpetually shifting, easing, crawling glacier.
"It's so big," said Pippa, whispering, because somehow to speak loudly seemed very wrong.
"We are intruders," nodded Franco.
"You two have a vivid imagination," snapped Keenan, and glanced back, where Olga sat with a shotgun pressed nonchalantly against Snake's side; not in a direct threat, but more as an act of suggestion. A suggestion of murder if he put a greasy weasel fox-foot wrong.
They cruised for a day, through endless tunnels and halls, but one constant remained, a trait which every vast space, every narrow corridor, shared. They travelled downwards; sometimes it was nothing more than a gentle decent, sometimes vast vertical cylinders seemingly scooped from the ice by precision machinery. As they descended one such vertical tube, Keenan pointed to rails set in the ice. Old rails, glinting like brass in the beams of their gun lights.
"Nobody would be that crazy," said Franco, uneasily, watching the rails
thrum
past. "What idiot would want to build a base down here?"
"Not a base," said Keenan. "A hospital. The original hospital, the first hospital and the last hospital. Ward 1. The original Sick World; where all this madness began. It's down here somewhere. Towards the core."
"The walls are too neat," said Pippa. She held her PAD, which was fluctuating wildly between differing states of operational status. A thin blue laser shot from the PAD and bounced from ice walls, then spun in a circle of piercing sharpness. Then died. Pippa read the results. "It's a perfect cylinder," she said. "It's impossible this was formed naturally; this tunnel was excavated. By machines."
"Were they mining, do you think?" said Keenan.
"For what?" frowned Franco, shivering a little. Then he perked up a bit. "Maybe it was for
gold
."
"Maybe it was for
death,"
said Keenan, and lit a cigarette. Smoke trailed up above them, into a deep velvet, blue infinity.
"You're a proper miserable bugger, going and ruining my fantasy like that," mumbled Franco. Still in his nurse uniform, his skin was going gradually blue, but he stubbornly refused extra clothing, exclaiming that a real man, a proper man, a
macho man
could put up with any excess of chill.
"Yes," pointed out Pippa. "Right up to the point when you're
dead."
Keenan shrugged, and smoked, and watched the descent.
They dropped a long, long way.
The Zeppelin3 bobbed to a halt. They were lost in yet another vast cavern system, a star sparkling in the centre of the galaxy; but this time it was different. This time, on the ice floor far below, something gleamed.
"Take us in slowly," said Keenan.
Nodding, Pippa scrolled dials and the airship lowered, engines a rhythmical thrumming. Super-cool air streamed past. What looked like tiny toys on the ground eventually enlarged, and it was with stunned awe Combat-K realised just how
big
the machines actually were. They weren't just
big
; they were
vast
.
The Zeppelin3 bobbed above them, and even Paddy made an effort to stand up and hobble to the side of the airship, bound tight in SnapWire, nose teeth peering over the edge, chattering.
"What is zey?" rumbled Olga, eventually, the first one to break the silence.
They gazed over the sea of machines, perhaps five thousand in all, glinting silver, and black, some with swirls of red; many of the huge cubes and rectangular alloy blocks contained odd blade attachments - each blade the length of an eighty-storey skyscraper - and each one looked positively lethal, on a world-building scale.
"I think we just found the excavation equipment," said Keenan, rubbing his hands together despite his WarSuit. The cold was really getting to him. He was a tropical kind of guy.
"I wonder if they still work?" said Franco, oddly.
Pippa looked sideways at him, aware of Franco's obsession with machines, and engineering in general. Motorbikes, cars, rocket ships, guns; Franco got a regular hard-on for anything that went click. "Why would you ask that?" she said.
"Just wondering," he smiled.
"Don't even be getting the stupid idea," snapped Pippa, frowning.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Franco, who'd crashed more QGM Warships, Cruisers, Shuttles and SLAMs than the entire QGM Crash Test Fleet put together. Whilst Franco loved machines, it would appear machines did not always love Franco.
"Yes, I'm sure you do," said Pippa, "you've got that bloody glint in your eye, like the time you ran that ten million tonne oil tanker up the Jajunga Beach on Kimo, knocking over three hotels and ruining a
lot
of beach holidays. Including the QG Mayor's."
"Hey," said Franco, "that was the controls, that was. An illogical layout."
"No Franco, it was your
lack
of control at the controls, dickhead. So, and you listen good my little ginger friend, the
last
bloody thing we need is you taking control of a fucking machine capable of ploughing down to the core of the planet. You hear what I'm saying? Sick World is unstable enough as it is without a mad burrowing ginger maggot cutting holes through entire tectonic plates."
"I am sure," said Franco, primly, "that I don't know what you're talking about. However," he turned and stared at Pudson, leaning over the rail, vertical eyes blinking in the cold ice air, "I'm a-wondering if he does."
Franco scampered over to Pudson, and shoved a Kekra quad-barrel machine pistol in his face. Pudson gawped, stupidly, like somebody with a machine gun in his mouth.
"Talk, muppet."
"What would you like me to say?" It was more whine than speech, and subtly impeded by inches of ice-rimed steel. However, Paddy made a good effort at answering the question.
"What are those machines?"
"For digging. Can't you see?"
"How long have they been here?"
"Longer than us humans."
Franco stared at the deformed freak before him. He clicked his tongue in annoyance. He wanted to say, "Human? You're a bloody long way from being human, mate," but instead focused on his questioning. "Do they still work?"
"I don't know that," said Pudson. "I've never seen them before. I've only heard rumours. Legends, if you like. There was supposed to be a place deep under the ice where the World Builders stored equipment." Pudson went suddenly red, and snapped his mouth shut.
Franco prodded him. "Tell me more."
"No."
"I'll toss you over the side."
"If you do, I'll... I'll... I'll kill you!"
"How? You'll have been tossed over the side! Idiot!"
Paddy Pudson looked suddenly crafty, quite a feat on such a deformed facial construct. "I wasn't going to do it
now,"
he whined, like a kid deprived of a jelly baby. "I know what I'm doing, I am. Oh yes. I'm playing the long waiting game, you see. I'm patient. I will have my fame and fortune and gory glory gold one day! I'll be great! You'll see! It's called the long waiting game. It's always worked for me. Waiting works, you see? You see, don't you?" He grinned like a maniac, which surely he was.
Franco withdrew, returned to Keenan, and scowled at the hunched form of Paddy Pudson, crusted with ice, eyes gleaming malevolently as he stared down at the
trillion-
tonne machinery below, presumably used to excavate these vast caverns through which Combat-K now travelled like a worm through a rotten apple.
"What a fool," said Franco. "Fame and fortune? The only fame and fortune he's going to achieve is on the end of my fucking boot. What do you think, Keenan?"
"I think we're nearly there."
"Nearly where?"
"Look."
The Zeppelin3 had been drifting as Franco had his little chat with Pudson, and a wall like a cliff face reared above them, shearing off in a gentle curve into the distance of this ersatz interior sky. At the base, where the vast machines ended, they were replaced by
fields
of trucks, freight containers and tanks, all ancient, all coated in thousands of years of frost and ice. And here, Combat K could see an arch so vast they could pass fifty Zeppelin3s beneath its wonderful stone curve.
On the zenith of the arch, in kilometre high letters, was an ancient carving.
It read: WARD 1.
"We're here," said Keenan. "Get your shit together. We're going in."
"It's creepy," said Franco, as they floated near-silent beneath the arch. "It's spooky. It's freaky. It's giving me the heebie jeebies."
"Shut up," said Pippa between clenched teeth, her gun trained on... a wall. Of black ice. Slowly, they descended and touched down on rock. Behind, a cold wind howled through the Ward 1 archway, and before them, in the mountain-sized mass of humped cubic black ice, was a normal, white, hospital ward set of swing-doors. They were tiny, a sparkling contrast, like a diamond lost against the backdrop of a galaxy.
"Looks fishy," said Franco.
"As well as creepy, spooky and freaky?" snapped Pippa. "Gods, Franco, can't you learn to keep your big flapping mouth shut?"
"No," said Franco, in all seriousness. "I was Captain of our School Debating Team. It trained me to keep my mouth open at every possible opportunity, especially when being addressed by a particularly foxy young squad killer." He leered at Pippa, and gave her a wink... as something large and shovel-like, pressed against his arse.
Pippa turned from the hospital doors, which seemed to glow, almost surreally, with a hint of whiter-than-white.
Olga loomed over Franco, beaming. "Hello sweetie," she said.
Franco coughed. "Um. Hello love," he said, and reaching up, pecked her on the cheek.
Pippa blinked a lazy, tomcat blink, and bared her teeth in a sudden wide and understanding grin. "So then," she drawled, as with deft hands she settled the Zeppelin3's engines and killed the power. The huge vehicle gave a
sigh.
"You two, you know, a bit of an item now, are you?"
Franco's smile was tighter-than-tight. "Yes."
"So, you fancy a slice of Olga pie, do you Franco?"
"Shut up."
"Fancy getting your face between those two massive ripe peaches of bosom, do you?"
"Shut up."
"Fancy giving her a bit of the slick Franco loving?"
"Shut up."
"After all, they don't call you Franco 'Horny Stud Muffin Who Can Fuck All Night' Haggis for nothing now, do they, eh Franco?"
"Shut up."
Pippa turned, and Keenan was pulling on his pack. Fizzy and Shazza had sorted out their kit, and removed the tight-fitting nurse uniforms which Franco seemed strangely reticent to remove. Snake was ready, with Olga his appointed guardian (for Health and Safety reasons, i.e. Snake's Health and Combat K's Safety). Betezh was packing guns, raided from the Zeppelin3's armoury, and only Franco seemed to be messing about, with Olga's hand apparently permanently spot-welded to his arse.
"We ready?" she said.
"Most of us," said Keenan, eyeing Franco warily. "You up for this gig, Franco? Or are you going to stay here and play with your fat girlfriend?" He switched to Olga. "No offence meant."
Olga grinned with teeth that could bite through live electric cabling. "None taken, stick man whom I could break like a brittle twig with one great blow of my great fists!" She leered close and winked. "Understand that, little jelly-man?"