"It was developed for surgery," said Franco, leaping down and picking up his Kekra quad-barrel machine pistols. "It's called gamma-knife surgery, where intense and multiple concentrated beams of gamma rays, the most dangerous form of radiation in the Quad-Gal, are directed on a single spot. The beams are aimed from different angles to form an infinitesimal point of impact. This fucker could cut through a planet crust." He beamed, and winked. "Not bad for a simple cheese-eating squaddie, eh lad?"
Keenan laughed, and whacked him on the back. "Not bad, mate. Not bad at all."
"So now to VOLOS?" said Pippa.
"Yeah." Keenan's eyes hardened. "Now on... to VOLOS."
They squelched through dismembered corpses, with only the lights on their guns for guidance. It took another forty minutes to cross the Morgue, and every minute was a nerve-jangling experience as they waited for yet another, second wave of undead to attack and rip off their heads. But it never came; the corpses had returned to their sanctuary; to their peace; to their rest.
The door, when they found it, was small, fashioned from a single piece of mineral, a black slab like a coffin lid. Keenan stopped, seeing the door but hearing a tiny clattering noise behind. Combat K turned, in an agony of fear, and from the blackness, the stygian gloom, creeping into the edges of their gun-lights, emerged...
First, a
buzz
, as tiny insects flickered around the dancing beams of light. Pippa hissed, lifting her yukana swords in defence, for these were Morphs: the insects created from tiny hypodermic needles, from back at the hospital where she and Betezh had been stung, and taken prisoner. They flickered, swooping and whining like mosquitoes on bad acid. But even as they jittered, from the black came more enemies... nurses, tottering on legs made from hypodermics, crutches, scalpels, their peroxide hair curled, their lips bright and red, teeth snarling... there were doctors and surgeons, many with their own internal organs hanging on strings and chains, and each bearing medical weapons of exaggerated proportions... there were patients, squaddie patients, many with three legs or five arms, cam-cream on their faces, their green backless gowns flapping forlornly in the damp dour gloom of the Morgue. There were patients in straightjackets, gibbering and drooling and grinning, and yet more nurses with bags and pans for heads, eyes slopping around in colostomy sack faeces... there were Cryo Medics with thick black masks and ice-throwers, their breathing coming in short rasping bursts, and then flickers of blue shot through the darkness accompanied with the
buzz
and
spark
of the cackling battery-mouthed Convulsers. More nurses came, some on fire, the flames lighting up the darkness like torches and revealing
revealing a huge and endless rolling wave of bodies, of twisted mutated medical deviations of every possible size and description...
across the floor jumped and crawled babies, their wails squawking out as sick drooled and little black eyes fixed on Combat-K and thousands and thousands of medical staff, hospital staff, they all filled the Morgue from end to end as they advanced on Combat-K with a singular purpose...
"What shall we do?" squealed Franco, like a girl.
A roar went up, a roar so loud it deafened Combat K.
"
Be calm, my son,"
said Father Callaghan inside Franco's head. His Temple Pill throbbed. "
Use the core of your Wisdom, my son."
At last! thought Franco. He's earned his $19.99! Reaching into his mouth, Franco clicked free the two tiny WiT bombs, armed the dets, and hurled them into the fast accelerating medical ranks... the
boom
was incredible, and a couple of hundred medical bodies shot up and out, nurses and doctors, babies and mutations all spinning into a powerful tornado flurry of merged and mashed limbs and faces, and Combat-K turned, sprinted, and heaved through the coffin-lid doorway, leaping through into a smooth tunnel beyond where walls gleamed with tiny crystals and veins sparkling through stone.
The door slammed behind them. There came a savage
thud,
and the door began to shake as Keenan coolly threw three huge bolts into position.
"How long will it hold them?" Pippa's voice was small, her face ashen.
"Let's move," said Keenan, shrugging, and Combat-K moved forward, onwards, ever down... with muffled distant booms and shrieks and clatters and squeals and shouts and squawks following from The Morgue.
The end of the tunnel glowed with a bright black light, so bright Combat-K had to shield their eyes on approach. They stepped out onto a ledge, perhaps six feet wide, where the avatar of VOLOS waited, in silence, hands clasped before him.
Holding hands protectively before faces, they tried to look into the vast edifice before them, but could not. It was black, but not black. It was every colour and it was no colour; it was every colour not yet invented, every colour never before witnessed by human eyes, and thus incomprehensible, even to a relatively advanced mammalian brain.
"Welcome," said VOLOS. "Although you have led the hordes to my core."
Franco poked Keenan with his gun, and Keenan stepped forward, almost reluctantly. He knew; here was something so powerful, so strange, so alien, that what could three simple soldiers with machine guns possibly hope to achieve? They could never kill VOLOS. All they could do was talk. But would he be willing to listen?
"Why did you try to kill us?"
"I did not." The voice was soft, lilting, almost musical. It came, seemingly, direct to the brain, without involving complex organic audiometric equipment. It was neither too loud nor too quiet, and had no sexual attachment. It was just a voice, a beautiful voice, a powerful voice.
"Well we weren't playing a game back there," snarled Keenan. "You put us through your pointless tests to see if we were worthy to meet you, face to face. Well, we're here. We're pissed, and we want to see you, fucker!"
"You look upon me," said VOLOS. "Your eyes cannot properly interpret what you see. However, let me explain a little. I am not a creature, a lifeform, as you would understand it. I, VOLOS, am the planet."
There came a stunned silence.
"Like, as in the
whole
planet?" splurted Franco. "That's damn bloody impossible! How can you be a bloody big buggering planet?"
"My head and heart are the core of the world," said VOLOS, and the voice seemed now more gentle, more intuitive as it linked to Combat K's brain-patterns. "The mantle is my flesh, my muscle, and the crust is my skin. My veins are the faults that run through the rock, the magma that flows through the billions of channels in my flesh; earthquakes are my shudders, my pain, and the sun warms my face every day for eternity."
Combat K were silent. Stunned. Confused.
"Impossible!" persisted Franco, clutching his Kekras to his chest like a small child holding a stuffed teddy. "Nothing so big can live!"
"Fool," said VOLOS, and only now did they perceive a hint of human emotion, of frustration, of annoyance, of
anger.
"What is life? What deserves the right to be called life? I think, I feel, I construct, I create, I destroy. I am not flesh and blood as you consider life; however, you stand here conversing with me, deep down near my heart and soul and mind, and it causes me great pain to converse with you, to focus everything on such a narrow spot."
"Why not use the avatar?" said Keenan. "Why go to all this trouble to bring us here?"
"I have a problem," said VOLOS, choosing words with care. "And I would ask for your help. But we must be swift, for even now the twisted medical hordes are marshalling their strength. I can only keep them at bay for so long."
"Then why try to kill us?" snapped Keenan, losing his temper. "Since we landed, you've thrown every fucking thing you can at us! From deviant nurses and doctors and patients, with their twisted medical technology and fucked-up genetics, to earthquakes and cryo-soldiers, battles between armies of deviant mutations, and even down to your pathetic tests of mercy and savagery, twisting our minds and fucking with our brains... this has been a damn hard exercise in survival, VOLOS, for somebody who simply wanted our help. You're fucking lucky we got here at all. And we've... lost friends along the way." Keenan was scowling, into the weird black light, not bothering to shade his eyes now as he felt the pulse of alien blood in his veins and felt the heat of the Dark Flame glowing in his heart.
"I have lost control," admitted VOLOS, and they felt a huge
pulse
of sorrow emanate from the world. It eased through them, like treacle through honey, and they felt his, or
its
, incredible sadness. "Once, a million years ago, I was strong. I was powerful. But with every passing second I grow weak. Yes, once I watched as the junks were created, even helped the suckling Leviathan create his army; but the Junkala were a plaything to me, that is all, and I wished to supply a twisted lesson to a proud and arrogant alien race who Leviathan wished to educate. The Junkala were cultured, and beautiful; yes. But they had designs on conquering the Galaxy, on invading, to create a vast and powerful Empire! Their arrogance was awesome to behold. You met Elana, yes?"
"I did," said Keenan, voice low.
"She has the facts twisted. She said they were like gods... and that Leviathan created me, VOLOS, to watch over them. Such a petty misguided angle of view; to be so narrow, so channelled. I knew Leviathan, yes. But I am far older than Leviathan. I saw his birth, and if you help me, I will watch his death."
Keenan swallowed, and glanced at Pippa.
"So all the nurses and doctors running wild on the surface - you do not control them?" she said.
"No. They follow their own deviated paths. Yes, I was instrumental in setting them on the road to their twisted medical civilisation; it is what I do. I plant a seed, but whether that seed grows into a bright beautiful flower, or a savage, suffocating, killing weed, I do not decide. I allow the chaos of nature that privilege." VOLOS laughed. "The great irony is that my power is all but gone. I am a shadow, a wisp of smoke, a decimation. The tests you went through to reach me - they were not
my
tests. They were created by the medical deviations, to stop any such as you reaching my Core. I am sorry you suffered so much pain on your journey here. It was never my intention."
"I thought we'd ignite the proto-matter and blast you to High Heaven, and then the loonies would have their world back," laughed Franco. "They'd all twist back into normality, and it'd be all fine and dandy. After all, Keenan here promised Lunatrick a new world..."
"No!" said VOLOS, and they felt the world shake, a trillion tremors running through every fault and line and lode. "Lunatrick is a dark spirit, he would have you transfer him to another, clean, new planet... so he could expand the corruption. You have to help me, Keenan. You have to help me grow strong."
"You are a machine?" said Keenan, remembering his conversation with the Junkala King.
VOLOS laughed then. "I have seen and heard your conversation, aeons past. Again, the Junkala had great arrogance. They imprisoned me! With machines! I was never truly imprisoned, but they restricted my energy, used ancient magic to stem my control. I am not a machine god, there is nothing mechanical about me. Yes, I am different physiologically, my blood is magma, my nerves are crystals; the Junkala, their history is as corrupt as their central nervous systems. I admit, I did not stand in the way of their deviation... but now, now I can start to put these things right."
"Why would you do that?" said Pippa.
"I have tasted humility," said VOLOS. "It is quite a thing to live in fear. Quite a thing to spend a million years growing ever more weak, watching those on your skin twist and corrupt and begin to understand you, to hunt you, to torture you. On your way here you saw the great machines they built, for burrowing under the ground. They were excavating me, searching out my Core. The creatures of Sick World want nothing more than to corrupt their Master." He laughed, a long sad laugh, like the extinction of comets. "If you help me, Keenan, if you help me I will save your friends, I will send them back to the surface where they can connect with the DropShip and leave this place..."
"And?" Keenan's eyes were bright.
"I will give you the key to unlocking the junks. You cannot fight their pestilence, Keenan. They are too strong. Instead, you must change them back again. Make them whole again, make them good and clean, make them pure, without a need to spread their toxic filth. I can do this. I can tell you where Leviathan hid the Soul of their Race. It is locked away in a Photon Shield. You can use it, spread it through the junks like a virus through software; and slowly, they will revert from poison."
"That's a strong bartering tool," said Keenan, warily. "What do you want of me?"
"You must give yourself to me."
There was silence. Keenan was frowning. "You wish me to die?"
"No. I wish you to
merge
with my Core. I need your Dark Flame, Keenan. I need the blood given to you by Emerald, by the
Kahirrim.
But you must give freely, or it will burn me, pollute my essence. I cannot force you. Will you do this, Keenan? Will you help me, help all the races of the Quad-Gal survive the junks?"
"No!" shouted Pippa. "You cannot ask this of him!" She turned to Keenan, grabbed him, shook him. "He's lying, VOLOS is lying, how do you know he tells the truth? How do you know he won't betray us, send us on a wild-goose chase? It's bollocks, Keenan, it's a lie!"