A hundred times Carter had opened his mouth to ask the question, and a hundred times he had closed it again. How do you know me? How do you know about Kade? But something stopped Carter; something clicked at the back of his skull, snicking into place and halting him.
What seemed like aeons ago, there had been a wise old soldier working with the Spiral DemolSquads. His name had been Ranger and he’d been a mighty grey-bearded warrior with an incredible reputation and the physique of a true athlete; a true gladiator. Carter had been young, newly acquired, fresh-faced and filled with optimism as he was drawn into the swelling ranks of Spiral. One evening, after a few pints down at the local NAAFI, Ranger had gathered some of the newcomers into a corner and they had talked in quiet voices, laughing often as Ranger regaled them with accounts of his heroic adventures; the old man was a born storyteller. But he had given them one piece of valuable advice which had stuck with Carter to this very day:
If you don’t want answers, then don’t ask questions.
And, when it came down to it, Carter, in his heart, in his soul, didn’t want to know about Kade. He didn’t want to give himself any false hope.
The Manta powered on towards Antarctica. A coastline of ice rose ahead of the trio. The sea looked glass-black below them, strewn with titanic chunks of ice and crashing wildly back and forth.
Huge sheer black cliffs sheathed in gleaming crusts of ice towered up. The Manta’s nose lifted, the fighter whining as it rose above sharp shards of rock and then dropped again to the white plateau far beneath, cruising low, huge storms of snow spraying up and out in the aircraft’s wake.
They hurtled through seemingly bottomless canyons where sunlight sparkled from walls of sculpted ice. They flew over mighty mountain ranges. A matt black arrow, they smashed through blindingly white blizzards.
Then, finally, Constanza pointed to Mongrel’s ECube. ‘ETA five minutes,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope the air defences spot this as a Spiral craft.’
‘As a ...’ Carter glanced back at the dark-haired woman. Her golden-eyed gaze met his. ‘You mean they have intelligent targeting systems?’
‘Yes.’
‘How you know?’ muttered Mongrel.
‘Because I programmed them. Now, keep to an altitude of three hundred feet; they get a better scan at that height. Don’t want them mistaking us for Nex, do we?’
‘Are the systems powerful?’
‘The best in the world,’ said Constanza softly. ‘That’s why the Nex haven’t found the Warhead. And there are also internal systems—anti-Nex intrusion filters powered by lasers. Any Nex who
has
discovered it is now just ash drifting against the snowfields.’
Carter modified his altitude, slowing the Manta’s speed again. Then he banked, tracking coordinates.
‘Down there!’ But none of the three could see the Antarctic Spiral base; it was obscured by a snowstorm, concealed by its natural ally.
Carter landed the Manta blind, breath catching in his throat as they approached what Constanza assured him was the short runway. The Manta slammed onto and over the hard-packed snow, taxiing to an abrupt halt as Carter threw the engines into reverse thrust with a blast of superheated exhaust that turned the snow to steam. He killed the engines, and they sat there in silence for a while.
‘This is it, Carter lad,’ said Mongrel, the first, as usual, to break the silence. To Mongrel, silence was heresy.
Carter peered out into the snowstorm. Squinting, he could just make out a vague shape, like a high grey wall, but dismissed it as only a shadow. They wrapped up as best they could in the confines of the Manta, then Carter slammed open the cockpit canopy and got a blast of snow and wind in the face. He gasped, blinking rapidly, then clambered down the recessed ladder and jumped into the snow. Constanza followed, and finally Mongrel, who closed the canopy behind him. Hydraulics hissed, and there was the precise
chunk
of a well-engineered machine.
‘This way.’ Constanza walked through the snow, and Mongrel and Carter followed. Carter nudged Mongrel. ‘What?’
‘You’re watching her arse.’
‘No, I not!’ Aghast.
‘Yes, you are. I’m following your line of sight. It’s her rump. You’re staring at her buttocks.’
‘I happening to admire tailoring at back of her fleece. Fine stitching, I thinking. But she does have first-rate, well-formed and ample backside—I sure. But look, you can see triple cross-back stitching on jacket—there. Perfect couture.’
‘Yeah, ‘course it is, Mongrel. Look, why don’t you say something to her?’
‘Like
what
?’ hissed Mongrel, eyes wild for a moment. ‘I fancy you, fancy a bit of the old rumpy-pumpy, but hey, I old, and fat, and nearly toothless, and tufted. I have cancer that will soon kill me, and maybe we all die any day now anyway when Durell piss his tox all over us. Can I take you to movie?’ Mongrel was spitting in his passion to speak, and his huge fists had clenched—an unspoken warning.
‘All those reasons are exactly why you
should
tell her.’
‘Hmph.’
‘Trust me.’
‘Carter, you is assassin and damn fine bomb-maker. But agony aunt you is not.’
Carter shrugged, increasing his speed to catch up with Constanza. Then all three halted as a high wall loomed out of the mist, a rearing grey-stone edifice seventy or eighty feet high. It was topped with small crenellations, like a castle—but the intensity of the snowstorm prevented them from looking further along the structure.
Constanza huddled against the door. A secret panel slid free and she punched in digits. A portal swung inwards, and the three tumbled through into a suddenly calm if dark haven. They were all glad to be out of the howling wind, the flesh-slapping snow.
The portal closed, muffling the banshee howls, and they stood there in darkness for a moment, snow drifting from hair and shoulders, shivering as something in the darkness clicked. Lights flickered on, dim and feeble.
‘Welcoming,’ observed Mongrel.
‘It’s a disused military base, not a brothel,’ said Carter, gazing around at the bare breeze-block walls and the concrete-section floor. It seemed suspiciously low-tech.
‘Shh!’
‘What?’
‘You not talk of such things in front of lady,’ Mongrel admonished. Constanza gave him a beaming smile, then moved through the chamber to another door up ahead. She punched in more digits, and they entered a circular tunnel of tarnished alloy. Hoisting packs, they trudged along, their boots making echoing thumping sounds. They could smell hot oil. Tiny flickers of amber light jostled across the walls occasionally, and then they were free of the tunnel and into another concrete and stone chamber.
‘The decontamination sheds are up ahead.’
‘Because you have to create the AI and RI chips in a hermetically sealed environment?’ Carter was rolling his neck to relieve tension; pain was a constant, throbbing reminder that, like it or not, he was still alive. The game was far from done.
‘Yeah, we don’t want to risk any pollutants sending a fifty-billion-dollar polymorphic missile up the wrong dictatorial arse.’
‘This ECW. You sure it will still be working?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Constanza. ‘This whole base may look disused, but it
is
operational. And it was built to last. Out here, the ice and snow moves; it is unstable. The Castle in its entirety is built on a series of hydraulic mobile support stanchions directed by simple AI algorithms; it can shift itself, redistribute its weight, put down extra supports deep into the ice. It is self-regulating, self-stabilising. No earthquake can destroy it, and certainly no shift in the ice can rip it apart.’
‘The Castle?’ asked Mongrel.
‘A nickname. Because of the turrets. When you see the place in calm weather, not in a storm, you’ll realise that it’s nothing like a castle; we were just fond of the term. Made it feel more like home. Although, a bit like old stone castles and their ballistic defences, there are a series of rail-driven mounted machine guns up on the roof.’
‘In case of massed polar bear assault?’ Mongrel asked.
Constanza patted Mongrel on the arm, and he beamed—like a schoolboy in love.
‘No,
Mongrel. They’re there because this whole area has awesome air defences, and when awesome air defences are present there is a much higher possibility of infantry and tank attack. The MGs have anti-tank capabilities with TI-uranium rounds in yellow-tagged ammunition belts. Just so you know. Anyway, you don’t get polar bears down here. They’re strictly Arctic Circle beasts.’
‘You think we get company?’
Constanza nodded. ‘The Nex are onto us. And if they discover where we are heading ... well, I am sure Durell must know
something
about the EC Warhead. That bastard has a finger in too many pies.’
‘If he try to finger
my
pie, then I bite it off.’
‘You’re a brave man, Mongrel.’ Constanza smiled up at him.
Mongrel puffed out his chest. ‘You better believe it, ma’am.’
After the decontamination sheds, Constanza headed for the central ECW Core—where it would take her fifteen minutes just to get through the coded security doors. And so, Mongrel being Mongrel, he had insisted on making a brew before following the woman down the long corridor to the Core. Carter waited with him, a cigarette in one hand, a weary grin on his face masking the constant worry of their imminent countdown to extinction. Mongrel, standing beside a small sink with his portable kettle, dropped three tea bags into tin mugs and stirred in hot water. As he brewed, he glanced back and frowned at Carter.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ said Carter, still grinning.
‘What?
‘Nothing,
ma’am.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Temper!’
‘Cunt.’
‘Tsch. There are
ladies
present. Or nearby. Even if they are semi-insane wannabe cannibals. Fuck, Mongrel, you really do know how to choose the nutcases!’
‘This nothing,’ grunted Mongrel. ‘Wait until you hear about Fat Chick Night! The corned beef! The doughnuts! The
horror!’
Carrying their steaming mugs of tea, the two men moved down more alloy corridors and through three massive portals reminiscent of the huge doors normally found leading to bank vaults, but lined with what looked like leaves of silver. The material shimmered with skeins of green, and seemed to flow like a constantly shifting liquid.
As they came through the third portal they both stared open-mouthed at the chamber ahead of them.
It was huge, football-stadium huge, and filled with computers. Huge banks of them lined every wall. They glittered in a sort of semi-gloom, gentle waves of lights undulating across banks of servers. Massive rows of unmanned machines spread out in octopus hubs set around the smooth marble floor. Everything seemed to guide the two men towards the centre ...
‘Over here,’ shouted Constanza. They jogged towards her, Mongrel leaving a trail of hot sugary tea.
‘Where’s the Warhead?’ asked Carter.
‘Over there. At the hub of the ECW Core.’
‘Where?’
‘There. Encased in a metal shell.’
Carter squinted. ‘Can we see it?’
‘Come on.’ Taking her tea, Constanza led the two men across the vast expanse of marble. The air was alive with electricity, a gentle hum and buzz which occasionally made the hairs on the backs of their necks crackle.
Lights flowed with them, paced them, sweeping across the walls. And the huge chamber was cool. Not the freezing temperature of the Antarctic conditions outside, but a dry coolness which indicated merely precision and control.
Constanza stopped by a bank of computers and typed in various passwords. Up ahead, on a small plinth, layers of metal peeled away, disappearing below the floor in precise measured sections to reveal:
The Warhead.
Evolution Class. Spiral’s greatest development prototype: untested, unused, a Pandora’s Box of military-grade destruction. As the metal sheath fell away, it gleamed under reflected computer light with tarnished gold.
‘Where’s the rest of it?’ asked Carter, eyes taking in the modest appearance of this reputedly awesome weapon.
‘That’s it.’
Carter stared hard at the Evolution Class Warhead. In total, it stood a mere six feet in height; there was no division between payload and engine, no fins, no panels, no markings. The ECW was a bare metal simplicity.
‘It wholly fucking unimpressive,’ scowled Mongrel.
‘Watch.’ Constanza hit a few buttons, and the surface of the Warhead seemed to become suddenly
molten.
It flowed, swirling around within its own set parameters, its own framework; a liquid held as solid. A living, moving shell.
Carter stepped forward, then glanced back. ‘Can I touch it?’
‘Yes.’
Carter reached forward tentatively and his hand dipped
into
the Warhead, making him jump. He withdrew his fingers with a jerk of panicked movement, and the shimmering gold flowed and re-formed into the steady shape of the weapon’s liquid exoskeleton.
‘Did you feel anything? Under the polymorphic chassis?’ Constanza was watching him closely, analysing his reactions.