A limb crashed out from the insanity, plucked Keenan from the bridge and lifted him hundreds of feet into the air. He flew, dizzyingly, the whole of The Factory spreading beneath him. Nausea flooded him. He vomited, and felt death touch him with a subtle caress. His flight halted, abruptly, and he stared down with sour lips at the metal limb that held him, at the talons that cradled him. They were narrow, an approximation of fingers, created by something that had never seen fingers.
Keenan snarled and screamed at the creature without words.
And again, Teller’s World trembled.
A scream rent the air. Keenan could smell hot metal, burning oil, the stench of death, rotting flesh, flowers, lavender. And he wept. He wept for the world, and he wept for his wife and for his murdered children. He could see them, their sweet smiling faces, their hands stretching out towards him, Ally brushing crumbs from his shirt, Rachel patting him on the shoulder with child-serious sincerity, Ally climbing nightmare-eyed into his bed and snuggling up close for protection, protection he could always offer them. Oh yeah, protect who? protect what? You offer shit. You can offer no fucking protection. And he hated himself and hated the world. Far below he watched Pippa stir, climb to her feet and glance up with a haunted face filled with empty desolation...
“What is it?”
Franco hefted the huge weapon, and swept it around inside the LightningAPSF—Advanced Prototype Surface Fighter. Cam buzzed a warning, dodged the trajectory, and retreated.
“We have to hurry,” snapped the PopBot.
“Calm down, calm down!”
“And stop pointing that damned thing at me!”
“Well, what is it?”
“An RPN.”
“You mean an RPG, surely?”
“No. It’s a Rocket Propelled Nuke.”
“Ahh. I didn’t realise they built those anymore.” Franco admired the sleek matt green shaft, and peered like a curious kid into the face—the tip—of the nuclear warhead. “Is it dangerous?”
“Of course it’s fucking dangerous,” spluttered Cam, “and only a madman would build one! Only a bigger madman would use one! A nuke, fired from your shoulder? The daft bastards kept nuking themselves! Insanity! Now put it down, get yourself a sub-machine gun or something, and follow me this instant!”
After an electronic hijacking of the Shift
,
Cam had led the two dazed men through The Factory, pushing them on faster and faster, urgently, to halt Keenan and Pippa’s impending demise. But, as Franco seriously pointed out, he and Betezh were reduced in terms of weaponry. They were hardly in a position to defend themselves, never mind fight and rescue their comrades. If indeed, their comrades needed—or wanted—rescuing.
Cam had reluctantly steered them to the graveyard of ships, and Franco’s eyes had lit up. Realisation dawned. “An escape route!” he blurted, then ran forward, waving his arms.
“You need to find Pippa first,” pointed out Cam.
“Good point. You said there were guns?”
“The huge rectangular craft is an Infantry Gun Carrier.”
Franco gave him a thumbs up. “Good lad.”
“Just be quick. And Franco?”
“Yes Cam?”
“Let’s be sensible about this.”
“Aye, Cam.”
Cam watched Franco stagger from the IGC, bent almost double under the weight of guns, bombs and RPNs. He sighed, a silent digital sigh, as the world around them began to tremble. The Factory shuddered, like an organic beast dying... or coming alive.
“
Cam!” shrieked Franco. “What’s happening?”
“We have to go. Now!” snarled the PopBot.
Franco dropped several huge bags of guns, and, followed closely by Betezh—more sensibly armed—sprinted after the bobbing PopBot. Huge booms echoed from the sky, and from beneath the ground. The world was screaming, trembling, shuddering. They pounded on, and in the blink of an eye careered from a street to see the world open before them, then on to a wide bridge above a bottomless chasm. Franco skidded to a halt, eyes sweeping the scene, taking it in with an educated eye, used to calculating conflict and the engagement of war in an instant.
Franco stared at the huge swirling mass of Leviathan.
Hmm,
he thought.
That has to be bad.
Then he stared with a frown at the limb holding Keenan several hundred feet above the bridge. Franco ran forward, halting beside Pippa, who was silent, her face a nightmare, her eyes piss-holes leading straight down to Hell. Franco pointed up at Leviathan.
“Oi! You! Dickhead! Put my friend down!”
The limb carrying Keenan swept towards the bridge, and Keenan’s rag-doll body sailed past Franco’s face with a howl, making him leap back, squawking. High above, a thousand other metal limbed tentacles unfolded from the hub of the swirling chaos that was Leviathan.
Franco scowled. “You cheeky son of a bitch.” He shouldered an RPN, smashed the safety cover with the butt of his Kekra, aimed it, and fired.
There was a
whoosh.
Franco staggered back ten steps, then sat down heavily with a
thump
.
The atomic warhead left a trail of fire through blackness, struck Leviathan, and was absorbed like a stone in a lake of black oil. There was a moment of hiatus, then a deep glow, the ignition of a sun, which blossomed and then went rigid, gloss black, and cold.
A deep groan filled the world. The bridge on which they stood shook. Above, huge rocks fell from the sky, house-sized and jagged, tumbling down past the bridge and disappearing into the chasm.
Franco climbed to his feet.
Betezh nudged him. “I don’t think he liked that!”
“Fuck ’im!”
A roar filled the cavern, so deafening it was beyond description. It came from everywhere at once: a blast so devastating it swept those still standing from their feet, and sent Cam scurrying wildly and erratically through the air on random eddies of tornado.
Leviathan’s limbs thrashed.
Keenan was swept around, high into the sky, then low skimming the bridge. As the limb came past Pippa, who had regained her sword, she leapt and made a neat vicious diagonal cut—
Talons rattled on steel, like knuckle-dice.
Keenan rolled along the bridge, winded, body and limbs slapping the metal.
The roar echoed again, and the sky rained rocks, several of which crashed against the bridge, making the structure groan. Franco shouldered a second RPN and grinned over at Keenan.
“This is the life, eh lad? Never a boring moment!”
“Fire into the chasm!” screamed Cam. “You cannot kill Leviathan! Fire into the chasm!”
Franco ran to the bridge’s rail, leapt, balanced himself, sighted, and standing precariously on the swirling iron above a dark infinity, he unleashed the warhead into the black maw below. A trail of fire cut the tenebrosity in two. The rocket howled, fading from hearing, and the nuke was gone.
Franco’s head snapped round. He scowled at Cam. “Nothing happened! You dumb-ass Bot! Anyway, what the hell was I firing at?”
“The chains,” whispered Cam.
“Chains?”
“Holding the Black Hole.”
Franco’s mouth flapped. “What do we do now?”
Keenan sprinted past him. He growled, “We run, idiot.”
Keenan slid, stopped, picked up the limp body of Kotinevitch, and flinging her over his shoulder with a wince of agony, sprinted again along the bridge. Behind them, Leviathan roared as somewhere deep deep deep below there was an almost silent explosion. Keenan, Pippa, Franco and Betezh skidded to a halt at the edge of The Factory’s broad street. Leviathan swirled and glowed. A terrible silence descended over the scene; calmness, a serenity.
A shaft of black fire a kilometre wide shot from the chasm below, engulfing Leviathan in an instant and blasting a hole through the rock roof above the bridge. The bridge was gone instantly, vaporised. The black fire twisted their eyes around in their heads.
“Run!” screamed Cam, and slammed off in crazy zig-zagging acceleration.
They pounded after the PopBot. Around them, The Factory started to crumble and collapse. Huge towering buildings disintegrated. Mammoth towers collapsed in on themselves. The world descended into a chaos of noise and rumbling destruction. The air filled with waves of smoke and debris, dust and shards of metal.
Combat K ran for their lives.
Ahead, Cam spun, scanners screaming, analysing the gathered ships in the collection.
There,
he thought
.
One of the most powerful and brutal ships ever built, known commonly as
No Rest;
it’s full moniker was
No Rest For The Wicked.
It was not, reputedly, the safest or most reliable ship ever built, but, by God, it was the fastest.
Cam sped on, communicating with ship Systems and warming engines, bringing subsidiary systems online. The
No Rest
glowed with bright lights, which drew Combat K like flies to a lantern. Panting, groaning, they sprinted towards the ship, glowing welcomingly through the dust and smoke. They hammered up the corrugated alloy ramp, and Pippa slammed into the pilot’s seat, lifting the ship from the ground on a punch of power, before the ramps had even closed. They soared high above the disintegrating Factory, only to discover it wasn’t The Factory that was crumbling— but the world
.
“What’s happening?” screamed Pippa, frantically searching scanners, and dodging a rainfall of crushing rocks as the
No Rest
levelled near the vast cavern’s roof, and curled, diving again as she searched for a way out of the planet’s interior. Sunburst scans rebounded from the cavern’s roof and floors, giving her poor feedback.
“Teller’s World is a machine,” said Cam, “an impossibility, but one which exists nonetheless. It is powered—and held in check—by a Black Hole at its core. You have heard of a Dyson Sphere?”
Pippa threw him a look. “Encompassing a star with a shell to capture its entire energy output? They tried it. It’s impossible. The structure breaks down due to Internal X Pressure Syndrome.”
“This is sort of the same, only Teller’s World was designed to harness the power of a Black Hole’s awesome gravitational pull, while trapping Leviathan at the core. It was a balance, in equilibrium. Now it’s breaking down.”
“So...” Pippa’s eyes were wide.
“This is a race,” said Cam. “When the machine stops operating, we need to be beyond the Event Horizon. Otherwise, we will be pulled into the unchained Black Hole with every other atom on this ersatz planet!”
“There,” said Keenan. He pointed to the scanners.
“I see it.”
The
No Rest
screamed and groaned as Pippa accelerated against an incrementally increasing gravitational pull. The walls of the ship started to vibrate with frightening violence. Pippa slammed controls to the full.
“You’re going to have to pull a K Jump.”
“Can’t do that,” said Pippa, teeth gritted. “Way too dangerous, especially from surface-side. It’ll spread us all over the fucking galaxy!”
“We’ll never out-race the pull,” said Cam, “because—and this is the bugger—we’re already in it.”
“Shit. We’ve got a one in ten thousand chance of surviving a K.”
“If you don’t, Pippa, we’ll die here. I guarantee it.”
Pippa stared at Cam, and gave a single nod.
“What’s this all about?” said Franco, face pale and bleak. He pulled out a small bottle, shook free a tiny, rainbow-coloured pill, and swallowed it. His eyes went wide. He coughed. His skin started to vibrate.
“We’ve got to do a K Jump, but first I need to get out of this shit. Any impurities in our field will throw us off course, and we’ll end up inside a fucking star. Everybody! Strap in. This is going to be the bumpiest damn ride of your lives.”
The
No Rest
was howling, glowing
.
As the cavern collapsed, so Pippa navigated up and out, on a treacherous raining path to the swirling chaos atmosphere of Teller’s World. Rocks pounded the ship with raging violence. Below them, as they burst free and soared into the sky, huge chasms opened across the landscape and the world collapsed. In the distance, a range of mountains disappeared in the blink of an eye. Below, the black desert was pouring like sand through an hourglass on a planetary scale.
“Everybody... hold on!”
Pippa’s hands clattered across keyboards. Her face was a mask of concentration. Tears soaked her cheeks. Silence swamped the ship. Franco’s grumbling, muttering voice was the only sound to be heard under the red glow of emergency lighting.
Pippa hit the boost.
The
No Rest For The Wicked
screamed... and flashed from existence.
It took the K Jump...
And followed a different path.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Remic is a young British writer. He has an unhealthy love of martial arts, kickass bikes, mountain climbing and computer hacking. Once a member of an elite Combat K squad, he has since retired from military service and works as a biomod and weapon engineer at the NANOTEK Corporation.