‘You going to attack? This baby have awesome rocket power.’
‘No.’
‘What your plan, then?’
‘We wait,’ said Carter, settling back with a second cigarette. He closed his eyes, and for a moment Mongrel thought his old friend was going to sleep. But then Carter smiled, rubbed at his eyes and drew deeply on his addictive weed. ‘We wait,’ he repeated, exhaling.
The Nex repair sub hummed through the waters and located the break in the cable with ease. Pressure hatches opened, and the submarine manoeuvred onto the supply-line breach, allowing the cable to be reeled in for repair. Lights glittered in the darkness. Carter watched the Sub-Core’s roving weapon systems on the video feed; he saw their precise, stepper-motor actions and licked nervously at his lips. To get this thing right, their timing had to be perfect—and when the action kicked in, Carter knew it would be sudden and brutal.
‘I see what you’re going to do,’
came Kade’s dark tombstone tones.
‘You do? Well, you’re wrong, fucker.’
‘I think you will be in need of my assistance very shortly, Mr Carter. In fact, I am pretty fucking sure of it... Do you know how many Nex that place holds? Over two thousand—you can’t take on that many alone ...
’
‘I can and I will.’
‘
Don’t underestimate them, Butcher. Don’t ever underestimate the Nex.‘
‘Thanks for your advice, Kade. Now fuck off, find a large stone, crawl under it and die. Or if you can’t perform that simple task, then drop yourself off a nearby vertical cliff. I need my
sanity.’
‘They’ve fixed it,’ said Mongrel.
Carter started the Viper’s engines. He could see the Nex submarine on his scanners. ‘You think they know we’re here?’ He glanced across at Mongrel, who was watching him carefully. ‘What?’
‘You planning what I think you planning?’
‘We need to get in.’
‘There no way you can piggyback on a submarine, Carter. That idea make you total mad
svoloch.’
Carter finished his cigarette. He rolled his neck and there came a crackling of realigning vertebrae; a release of tension; a sign of readiness. ‘I had something more
drastic
in mind,’ he said.
The Nex submarine cruised towards the Sub-Core. Carter hung back, the Viper pacing the larger vessel until they reached the signified perimeter of the Sub-Core’s defensive weapons. Mongrel wiped sweat from his brow and stared hard at Carter, then back at the scanners. The Nex sub increased its speed, and Carter waited. ‘You letting him get away.’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘
What
?’
‘You see the cannons? And the missile housings?’
‘Yeah?
So what?’
The sub was in their firing line. Carter was watching it glide smoothly towards the looming Sub-Core. The large corrugated hatchway opened, releasing a stream of bubbles. Both men were nervous, gazes fixed, joking suspended, as they watched the scanners and waited for the ... moment.
Carter slammed the accelerator forward until it struck the control panels. Engines screamed behind them and the Viper ZX surged at an incredible rate, like a fired harpoon, cannoning through the darkness towards the Nex sub and the Sub-Core beyond ...
Shots blasted from the defences, then deflected over the Nex sub’s bows. Carter activated the Viper’s weapons system and two STK rockets detached and hurtled towards the Nex submarine. Carter rolled the Viper, shot under the sub’s keel and then headed up towards the welcoming mouth of the Sub-Core’s hatchway. Again Carter hit the launch keys, and two more STK rockets detached. Mongrel frowned, looking behind him and then back at the scanners—
The first two rockets slammed into the Nex repair submarine and detonated, sending a green explosion of undersea fire boiling out, a discharge of unleashed energy that made the hundreds of chained submarines rock wildly. Instants later, the second salvo of STK rockets hammered ahead of the Viper, up through the hatchway and decompression chamber behind. In the heart of Sub-Bay 6, fire unfurled and expanded, vaporising Nex guards and a small launch station in a sudden rush of green flame and broiling gas.
As explosions rocked the Sub-Core, the Viper emerged from the sea like a released black bullet, leaping through the pressurisation field and landing on a long narrow launch ramp where it slid along in a shower of sparks and with terrible squeals of stressed steel and alloy, through walls of fire and clouds of smoke until it touched neatly against the far blackened scorched wall of the Bay with a metallic clank.
Metal panels peeled back and Carter leapt free, H&K MP5K swinging around in a rapid arc as his watering eyes squinted through the smoke and three Nex charged from the nearest doorway. Carter’s sub-machine gun spat a hail of bullets, picking the three Nex up one after the other and slamming them against the wall, drilling them with hot metal. Carter coolly changed mags.
‘So they know we here, then,’ growled Mongrel, hauling himself free of the wreckage and staring back at the battered, dented Viper.
‘Come on. And get that fucking ECube searching. I don’t think we’ve got much time.’
‘Really, Carter?’
Carter fixed Mongrel with a baleful glare, lifted his H&K and fired ten shots past his colleague’s cheek, so close the tufted squaddie could feel the spinning whistle of their superheated passing. The Nex soldier who’d been creeping up behind Mongrel was picked up and then slammed down hard on the buckled deck.
‘Yeah, really, Mongrel. Now let’s fucking move.’
Mongrel swallowed hard. He did not turn around. ‘OK, boss.’
They halted in some kind of cubical alloy chamber. It seemed to be a type of power generator, with banks of computers and a huge central mass of spiralling coils. It hummed loudly, and made Mongrel’s hair stand on end, fizzing with electrical discharge.
Carter dragged a blue-wrapped package from his pack and tossed it casually into the heart of the coils. Then he ran, and Mongrel sprinted after him, his face blackened by smoke, heart hammering, beer belly bouncing as they rounded the corner and Carter triggered the bomb.
The Sub-Core shook, alloy floor panels rattling violently under their boots. Fire slammed down the corridor and washed past to their right. There was a whine, then the fire was sucked back and a deafening boom pounded at their ears.
Sprinkler systems started up. In the distance, alarms droned in rising and falling wails. Carter smiled nastily. ‘Should give them something to think about.’
‘It possible that sort of behaviour could
sink
Sub-Core.’
Carter considered this. ‘Might do, yeah, that is always a possibility.’ The two men set off at a run again. Behind them they heard distant machine-gun fire. The Nex were shooting at shadows.
‘But Carter!’ panted Mongrel. ‘This dog not want to drown!’
‘I know that, Mongrel, old boy. But we need to kick up a fuss; we need a distraction.’
‘Not at risk of sinking whole damn Sub-Core!’
‘If that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes,’ said Carter evenly. They sprinted across a high gantry. Shots came up at them from a mounted MG emplacement guarding a whole field of small squat black generators, each one veined with silver crystals and with coils of copper around its base. Carter grinned viciously in the gloom under the erratic spitting of the sprinkler systems.
Mongrel wiped water from his face as Carter produced another blue-wrapped package.
‘I know you know what they is,’ snapped Mongrel.
‘Yeah. Pressurisation generators.’ Carter primed the explosive, then leant sideways and launched it past the flying 7.62mm bullets of the mounted gun. His eyes were gleaming, his breath coming in short gasps.
Mongrel was frowning through smoke and streams of water. He was trying to aim his H&K back down the corridor, searching for enemy Nex. ‘Pressurisation gen— you mean, things that keep this whole base
pressurised
?’
‘Right. I noticed the hull on the way in; this Sub-Core was never designed to operate at such depths. It needs a bit of friendly electronic and mechanical assistance.’
‘But if you blow them up, won’t this place slowly crush in on itself?’
‘Yep,’ grunted Carter. Then he covered his ears as the explosion tore through the massive chamber, vaporising the machine-gunner and sending blossoms of fire in all directions. Carter calmly climbed to his feet as the hot air of the blast ruffled his hair. He pulled free his Browning 9mm and checked the mag as a clatter echoed on the alloy walkway. The two men stared coolly at the twisted, detached barrel of the heavy machine gun. It was bent sharply at a seventy-degree angle and thick smoke poured from the drilled steel.
‘Savage,’ whispered Mongrel.
‘Nothing less than they deserve. Now, has your ECube got a lock down on those genetic coordinates yet? I think we’ve given the Nex a pulped and bloody nose. It’s time to find Justus.’
Alarms were howling, high and shrill, and Carter paused. The Sub-Core’s power had started to fluctuate wildly and the lights had suddenly gone down, leaving nothing but the occasional red firefly glow of emergency illumination.
‘This real creepy,’ muttered Mongrel.
‘Shh.’
They edged forward along a dark gantry, then walked quietly down a sweeping ramp. Carter glanced back. ‘This one?’
Mongrel nodded, and they both peered ahead through the falling sprinkler streams at the umbilical leading out through the cold dark sea towards the submarine prison block that housed the captured Spiral man.
Again, sounds of groaning metal reached their ears as they stepped tentatively onto the plastic of the translucent tube leading out from the Sub-Core. Carter’s hands pressed warily against the smooth synthetic surface, and he tried to estimate how thick the tube’s wall was. Not very, it seemed. That didn’t give him much confidence.
Behind him the Sub-Core was a hive of activity—and panic. The alarms had not only been triggered by Carter’s explosions, his acts of HighJ vandalism. They had also been set off by the destruction of the pressurisation generators and the consequent slow compression that had started to squeeze the Sub-Core in its fist. Occasionally, there came a scream of compressing steel and alloy that would stop just as suddenly as it had started, leaving nerves stretched piano-wire taut.
Stepping into the umbilical tunnel, Carter and Mongrel started to run.
The tube swayed gently all around them, and through its hazy plastic walls they could just make out the gloom of the dark sea and the lights of distant submarines.
‘This horrible!’ said Mongrel. ‘It feel like I in belly of worm!’
Carter said nothing, his stare fixed forward. The swaying of the tunnel, the constant shifting meant that bends and dips and humps suddenly appeared and then disappeared. It made precautionary surveillance difficult. And sprinting along the tube was incredibly tough work. The tension was heightened by the definite possibility of... combat.
Suddenly there were two Nex guards up ahead. All four fighters started shooting at once. Sub-machine guns yammered as Carter dropped to one knee, his Browning bucking in his fist. Mongrel whirled to one side, sliding onto his belly with a grunt, H&K MP5K spitting hot metal in his huge battered hands ...
Ricochets whined past Carter’s head. He blinked as one of his bullets smashed into a Nex’s chest, punching it backwards.
Carter changed magazines.
Mongrel’s H&K fired once more, and the second Nex was slammed against the tunnel’s wall, spurts of its crimson blood splattering up the plastic. Then Carter and Mongrel were running again and Carter put a single shot in the masked forehead of the wounded Nex as he raced past. The Nex was slammed down, twitching, head caved in.
Without a word, their nostrils wrinkling at the cordite stench, the two Spiral agents stepped over the bodies and peered at the hatchway in front of them that had been fitted neatly into the hull of the submarine. Carter reached forward and turned the metal wheel, releasing the portal so that it swung open on heavy steel hinges. A stench blew from the depths of the old sub and the two men glanced at one another warily.
‘More Nex in there?’ asked Mongrel.
‘No.’ Carter shook his head. ‘It would take a bomb to get through
that
door. A bomb or us, that is. I don’t think they need any more security inside. Do they?’
‘We soon find out. Yes. Soon. So you go first, Carter boy.’ Mongrel slapped him on the back.
‘Yeah, thanks, Mongrel.’
‘Is my pleasure.’
Carter stooped, stepping into the gloomy interior of the ancient submarine. It smelled really bad and it was bone-chillingly cold, too. The walls were covered with ancient crusted pipes and were painted a dark grey, the paint bubbled and peeling after so many decades of neglect. Lighting was provided by strings of swaying light bulbs linked by great looping arcs of simple electrical cord. They flickered, and some had blown so that there were several patches .of inky black shadow.
The two Spiral men moved forward carefully and Mongrel checked his ECube. ‘A hundred metres,’ he said. ‘We need to go
down.
Over there—ladder.’ Carter nodded, and they moved off carefully, ducking to avoid the low-hanging bulbs. Then they dropped down through a narrow hatchway in the floor, a circular opening leading into—