"Better them than me," he said.
"You bastard." Pippa's hand was shaking.
"Do it," said Snake. "You think I give a fuck? Don't you understand? We're moving further and further into Sick World, going deeper into the core. There's no escape from this place, Pippa. Shazza and Fizzy, they were lucky I think, they bought it first. I just hope my time comes as... quick." He smiled then, and his eyes moved to Keenan, who reached out and lowered Pippa's gun.
She looked at him questioningly, and suddenly read in his eyes the truth. There was no escape from this place. They were indeed going down to confront VOLOS, to save the millions of twisted deviated medical staff and patients of Sick World... but, in Keenan's mind, this was a one way journey; a suicide mission. There was no return.
"Hell," she breathed.
"We're already there," said Keenan, quietly.
"You think we're not coming back?"
"I don't believe in miracles," he said.
"So you think we're all going to die? And you stand there, smug and arrogant, and play with our fucking lives and drag us deeper and deeper into this mess, this insanity, and expect us not to fight our way out?"
"Look around," said Keenan. "How the hell did you think we were going to escape?"
"Roll over and fucking die, then," snarled Pippa. "But I won't!" She glared at him. "I thought you had more fight in you than that!"
She stormed off, to where Lunatrick waited by a sandy-floored tunnel that led so steeply up they would have to traverse it on hands and knees. "We must hurry," he said, stroking his thick beard. "They will soon blow a hole in the Upsamid's wall. It is an ancient relic, not a fortress."
"And where are we going now?" snapped Pippa, eyes wild, finger tight on gun trigger.
"Through the core of the Upsamid," said Lunatrick. "Down. Down and down, to the Star Lakes, and down through those, and on towards the Hardcore: Vela. VOLOS's
hospital
."
Around them, the Upsamid started to vibrate. Sand and pebbles skittered across the floor, and the whole edifice was suddenly shaking as if seized in the fist of a savage earthquake.
"What is it?" shouted Pippa. Franco was slapping at his PAD, but down here, it was effectively non-functional.
"Quickly!" shouted Lunatrick. "Follow me!" His face was contorted in horror. "They have sent the Eartheaters! Oh gods, I cannot believe VOLOS would unleash them on his world, in this place..."
"Eartheaters?" snapped Pippa.
The rumbling increased, and suddenly a hole appeared in one wall in an explosion of rock and dust and snapping teeth. The Eartheater was there, its huge head seemingly made of meshing steel wheels and teeth and eyes, all of them spinning and intertwining like a kaleidoscope from a metal nightmare. Its body was long, the thickness of a man, a putrid stinking brown corrugated sausage-skin, and suddenly five guns trained on the creature and bullets screamed and roared and the whole world became a madness of violence and snapping teeth, Combat K members scrabbling and trying to get back and away from the savage vicious spinning mouth, teeth, gears, saws, wheels, grinders, and eyes. More and more bullets roared and howled, slamming and smashing the Eartheater into a battered bloody limp pulp. There came a
slup
as the long worm body fell from the fast-excavated tunnel... But still the Upsamid shook.
"That wasn't so bad," said Franco, grinning suddenly, and kicking the long, dead worm with his boot. He surveyed the mash of head which served not only as head, but as an excavation tool capable of burrowing through rock and stone.
"That's the first," whispered Lunatrick. "There will be more! Hundreds more! Quickly, follow me!'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
VELA
The remaining members of Combat-K scrambled up the steep slope, using fingers and knees to help their ascent. Dust rained down, choking them, filling their eyes with grit, and they struggled against the violent earthquake of Eartheaters. Behind them, in the chamber vacated, they heard five or six creatures thud to the ground and begin a curious screeching, rotating, gnashing of teeth and gears and facial grinding appendages.
"They're coming," boomed Betezh, who had somehow managed to get himself to the back of the group. He kept looking behind in what would have been a comical manner, if the consequences hadn't been having legs chewed off. In a panic, he fired off ten bullets down the steep tunnel - and at the noise, the Eartheater's heads snapped up and they wriggled towards the opening.
"Dickhead," snapped Pippa.
At the top of the incline they ran until they reached a huge cone, the point of which slotted neatly into the tip of the Upsamid. The interior of the cone swirled black on black on black, in what should have appeared a solid blackness. However, here there were a million different shades of black, all coalescing like black cream in black coffee, and the group stared down into this spinning display, and looked to Lunatrick for guidance.
"We must jump," he said. "It will accelerate us down to the Star Lakes. The Upsamid is a transport device, a focus, if you will. It will
concentrate
you down towards Vela. And, ultimately, VOLOS."
Franco gave a big sigh. At the bottom of the tunnel, the Eartheaters, now numbering twenty or more, made a spirited attempt at climbing the tunnel ascent with face blades gnashing.
"Show me," said Keenan.
Without a word, Lunatrick stepped off the rim and into the swirling black. He vanished, instantly.
Franco nudged Keenan with his elbow. "Hey, how do we know he wasn't just vaporised?"
"We don't."
"So, what do we do now?"
"We jump."
"After you," grinned Franco manically.
"As you wish."
Keenan stepped off the ledge, into the spinning cone, and was gone. No sound, no drama, no fuss. Pippa followed, and Betezh, and Snake and Olga, until only Franco was left alone on the rim, jiggling from one foot to the other, looking nervously into the spinning black and then back at the Eartheaters making their way up the steep tunnel...
"But how do I know you haven't
all
been vaporised?" he moaned to nobody at all. He glared at the Eartheaters, who gnashed their way towards him. "And you lot can stop fucking grinning as well!" he screeched, turned and, as fangs and circular razors and grinders lurched for him, he leapt. And, even then still moaning, was gone in a flash.
Franco swam through oily blackness, and slowly emerged through the sky as if floating through airborne treacle, to stand on a platform looking across an infinite lake of glittering gold and silver, and a rainbow of colours which merged and meshed and constantly interchanged.
"Far out, dudes," he said. "Why can't the worms follow us?"
"They are machines," explained Lunatrick. "Mechanical constructs. Made from leftover medical equipment. VOLOS is inventive like that. And so, the accelerator cone only works on organic. Even now, they'll be jumping in and getting mashed all up into cogs and gears and bits and shit."
"Neat," said Franco. "I like it." He stroked his beard and stared out over the Star Lakes. He glanced at Pippa. "Hey, fancy a swim?" He laughed, but his laugh petered out into nothing as he saw their faces.
"It would appear you're right. A swim. Yes. In crushed proto-matter; the birthing agent of
Stars."
Franco stared at the colourful, swirling matter beneath him. So, he thought, this is the stuff which creates a sun? Wowsers! And I have to swim through it all? Damn and bloody bollocks! That's amazing, that is! Reminds me a bit of those fabulous Rainbow Pills I used to get from Mount Pleasant!
"So we keep going down," said Keenan, eventually, voice weary. "What will we find beneath the Star Lake?"
"This is the final barrier," said Lunatrick as he stroked his beard, voice lugubrious. "And one through which I cannot pass. VOLOS knows me, he knows my genetic code, my DNA keys. I am locked out of Vela, as are all of those Highside. Only you, with your new genetics, will be allowed into the genepool."
"Hey, what kind of genepool?" said Franco. "There ain't nobody stealing
my
genes. I'm damn fond of every last bloody one, despite some rips in the knees." He was attempting a joke, but nobody took him on.
"It means having been genetically excluded, right?" said Pippa. "This Star Lake, it's like a giant biocomputer. It knows the codes for every lifeform on the planet; and subsequently, can force them out. Keep them away from VOLOS, yeah? Only us, with our new and original codes, out twisted mutations, only we can progress."
"So we just jump in?" said Franco, who was actually quite keen to begin swimming in star-matter. He could sometimes be a little perverse, he was the first to admit; bizarrely, this kind of
did it
for him. Before he realised what was happening, Olga was beside him, close beside him,
very
close beside him, rubbing at him and crooning, and she had taken his hand in her great scarred tattooed paw. She squeezed him, and Franco yelped, sure she'd broken a couple of fingers, so prodigious was her strength.
"We go swimming together in the birth of the universe, ya?" she said, and Franco could smell her musky scent.
"Don't get any ideas, Big Girl."
"We swim naked, if you like. It like being born in a star! I heard it quite ze invigorating experience!"
"The thing is," said Franco, "I'm kind of pining. For Mel, you understand? Now, I know she was an eight-foot mutation. And I know she drooled pus from every conceivable orifice.
And
I realise she divorced me. But, well, Olga, the thing is, I miss her puckered up little brown-mottled face, you know? I miss her growls, grunts and farts. I miss her slimy kisses and the thrill of her sharpened claws around my erection. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that although I've warmed to you, lass, in the last few days during these mad and mental bloody adventures, although you hold a big fat place close to my heart, although I must admit I quite fancy a hairy-lipped snog every now and again and the chance for you to show me those wrestle-fuck moves you keep going on about, the thing is, I'd feel like I was betraying her memory. And I can't be having that, lass."
There was a long pause, and Olga nodded, bent down, and kissed Franco on the cheek. "That was ze beautiful, Franco. Olga will wait for you. Olga will be there for you, when you are ready, no matter how long that take." She ambled off, and gave Betezh a friendly punch on the arm; a blow that disabled him for the next thirty minutes.
Keenan leaned close. "Eloquent," he said.
"Cheers, ears."
"I was being sarcastic."
"You were? Hot damn, you disguise it well, Keenan."
"I'm not looking forward to this. It's a gang-rape of the lowest order."
Franco nodded, and Pippa moved close. "Keenan?"
"Yeah, babe?"
"I'm sorry. About my little outburst. Before."
Keenan grinned, and took Pippa's chin in his hand in a rare moment of affection. His thumb stroked her cheek and, leaning forward, he kissed her, a lingering slow kiss, then turned and faced the Star Lake.
"What was that for?" Her voice was low.
"Ach, fuck it, it wasn't for anything. I kissed you because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I'm sick of this evil between us and the minute we head down there, down to Vela to face this
thing,
this
alien
called VOLOS, then there's a high probability we're going to end up dead. This place is too advanced for us, too
weird
for us. The way we got here, through the Levels in Ward 1, through that Upsamid cone accelerator... that isn't normal, girl. We're dealing with a... with a
technology
we barely comprehend. This isn't a simple assassination; we can't just wander in there and kill VOLOS. If we don't like what he has to say, if he wants to take us apart gene by gene then, in all reality, there's probably little we can do about it."
"You could contact Cam," she said, in a small voice. "Get him to come fizzing on out to our aid." She laughed. She didn't sound convinced.
"I keep trying, babe. I keep trying; but the little fucker isn't answering."
Pippa moved to the edge of the platform, and gazed out over the Star Lake. Below, colours whirled and twisted through strands of gold and silver. The whole was a beautiful thing, but as Pippa had learned in life, during many a painful experience, beautiful things could often be deadly. Including herself.
She took a deep breath, took hold of Keenan, and kissed him back. He let her hold him, and only pulled away when he saw Franco, in his peripheral vision, hopping towards them in a curious sideways crab-like movement which he sometimes employed. Franco was grinning from ear to ear, as if his head had been opened up by a machete.
"What do
you
want?"
"Sorry to split up you two lovebirds, eh? Eh?" Franco nudged Pippa viciously in the ribs, and gave her a ribald wink. "Eh love? Eh? I saw all that, tongue action and everything, it was a pleasure to watch, a pleasure to observe if I may say so myself." He licked his lips. And coughed. "Anyway, Lunatrick says we have to go now. Vela awaits. All that kind of crap. So, guys, we going or what?"