Carter leapt, his Browning whipping up—but Durell moved faster than any twisted deformed husk had a right to move. They slammed together, Durell’s claws knocking the Browning skittering across the alloy deck. Carter twisted, slamming his elbow into Durell’s head, ducking a high swipe of claws and ramming five low punches into Durell’s abdomen—into his
thorax.
Carter leapt to dodge another sweep of claws, smashed a right hook into Durell’s head, then took a blow which cracked into his broken nose and made blood splatter free, a curtain of crimson droplets. Stars flashed in his brain. Carter landed on the deck, panting, as another blow whistled past his ear and his boot lashed out, stomping against chitin with a sharp crackling sound. Durell made a curious keening noise, and Carter thought—I hurt him. I hurt
it.
Jam and Mace had also made their moves simultaneously, Mace pouncing with awesome speed as Jam’s sub-machine gun clattered and bullets scythed through the immobile ranks of Nex, standing with lowered Steyr TMPs in gloved hands—and not even blinking as bullets caved in their flesh with harsh slapping impacts. Such was their discipline.
Jam was large and strong, but Mace was preternaturally fast, his fists smashing out to beat against Jam’s head and eyes. Jam thundered a blow into Mace’s head, stunning the smaller Nex. Spikes flowered along his armoured forearms as the ScorpNex swept his razor weapon towards Mace: who had tortured him, burned him and, ultimately,
raped
his humanity ...
Durell came back with a straight and awesomely powerful blow that staggered Carter, hammering into his forehead and sending him reeling backwards. He lost his footing and slapped onto the alloy deck. Durell leapt., deformed shell twisting and claws slashing down—but Carter had rolled, a black knife appearing in his fist and slashing across Durell’s armoured shell with a tiny hiss of steel parting chitin-flesh. Dark blood rained down upon him, speckling his face and hands, as Durell landed and whirled, his claws smashing the knife away.
‘Not so fucking easy, is it?’ snarled Durell.
‘That hurt, didn’t it, fucker?’
Durell charged again. Carter gritted his teeth and ran to meet Durell with his fists hammering, ducking blows, sidestepping, smashing a crazy combination of straight; and hooks, then leaping to kick Durell in the head with both boots. Durell staggered as Carter landed, whirled low and leapt at Durell once more, grasping the large Nex in a bear hug and then hammering his head down, mashing his forehead into Durell’s face time after time ... Something broke, a tooth or splinter of cheekbone, sticking like a needle into the skin of Carter’s forehead but Carter did not care, could not care as his savage and unrestrained onslaught continued ... With a terrible sigh-pitched scream Durell threw out his powerful clawed arms and Carter was knocked back, staggering and slipping on the blood-speckled alloy. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Jam battling, exchanging furious blows with the tiny figure of Mace who moved like a whirlwind, a bloodstained knife in each gloved hand, slashing and stabbing with deadly precision at Jam’s armoured body ...
Durell charged. Carter ducked a flurry of blows and rammed both fists together into Durell’s groin, rolling away from Durell’s pounding claws and rising into a crouch. Then he caught sight again of Jam and Mace moving in a blur, with Jam being pushed closer and closer to—
Carter frowned. What was that? Where the alloy deck sell away into—
‘A Gravity Displacer,’
said Kade gently.
Durell attacked again, snarling, saliva and blood spitting out as Carter connected with several more punches and danced out of Durell’s reach. They were both fast, both powerful, but Carter had the edge: he was fighting for an entire planet, an entire
race.
And he was fighting for his son.
‘Come on!’ screamed Carter, his face a red mask, gleaming under the sunshine. He raised his fists, stained with both Durell’s and his own blood. ‘I will fucking beat you to death with my fists, you Nex cunt. I will rip out your fucking heart with my teeth.’
A cry echoed, and Carter’s head slammed right. Mace had backed Jam towards the Gravity Displacer, with its treacherous steep slopes leading down to the dark mouth of the displacer itself. Jam had been kicked by a massive double blow and had toppled backwards, claws raking against the smooth alloy which screeched and tore in long jagged shavings of metal. Then he disappeared from view ...
‘No!’ yelled Carter. Then Durell was there and a blow hammered into his temple, staggering him, and another heavy blow to the bridge of his already broken nose dropped him to the deck.
Carter lay there for a few seconds, panting, staring down at the black alloy veined with minute traces of silver. A pool of his own saliva and blood formed under his face, a slick mirror of crimson in which he could see a reflection of his own battered and broken features. His own eyes stared back at him, accusing him, and for once he didn’t need Kade to fill him with horror, regret and shame. You are beaten, said those eyes.
You have given your best. You have fought hard—but ultimately you know, you recognise, you understand: the world is doomed, humanity is doomed, and you cannot halt the inevitability of fate.
Durell’s damaged claws rolled Carter onto his back and he stared up at the terrible deformed visage, Durell was battered and broken too but he was also grinning and drooling, his slitted copper eyes staring down at Carter with contempt.
‘See?’ he hissed.
‘See?’
Carter coughed, spitting out blood. Then he focused. ‘I see a face in need of a plastic fucking surgeon,’ he snarled. His fist lashed up but Durell stamped on his arm, pinning it to the deck.
Carter turned his head and could see Mace looking down at something. Durell turned, and Mace pointed. ‘He is hanging on. He has dug his claws into the slope halfway down. Do you want me to finish him?’ Mace tossed one of his bloodstained knives into the air, where it spun, shining darkly with gore before being caught neatly in the Nex’s gloved hand.
A Nex approached at Durell’s signal and handed him a Steyr TMP. Durell levelled the gun at Carter’s face and looked down at him.
‘What do you think, Mr Carter? You want your best friend, my best
creation,
to finally shuffle off his Nex coil? You can prevent this. You can prevent
all
of this.’
‘By joining you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why the
fuck
do you want me, Durell? What the
fuck
can I possibly offer
you
?’
‘I want you,’ said Durell softly, his voice barely more than a low, lilting croon, ‘because of the KillChip.’
‘The
what?’
‘Three seconds to decide, Carter. The Warhead is nearing its pick-up. We haven’t got time for games. Your
world
hasn’t got time for the playing of games.’
Carter stared into Durell’s copper eyes. The Spiral man’s face contorted in rage, his eyes sparkling with tears of frustration and a need for pure hot violence. ‘Fuck you, Durell. I would rather die.’
Durell’s head turned, and he nodded to Mace. ‘Kill Jam.’
Mace smiled, a thin-lipped evil smile. ‘My pleasure.’ Durell stared down the Steyr TMP pointing straight at Carter’s face. He smiled sadly. And then he sighed a sigh of genuine regret.
‘Goodbye, Mr Carter.’
T
he earthquake rumbled. It took Africa in its fist and violently shook the entire continent like a dog with a bone; a Sleeper Nex with the corpse of a mutilated woman.
A Dreadnought used Gravity Displacers, but it was still linked to Earth by the force of displacement and the laws of displaced physics. So, as Africa trembled, so too did the Dreadnought, swaying violently as ranks of Nex shifted their positions, guns coming up for balance like tightrope walkers’ poles as they attempted to stabilise themselves on the rocking, swaying alloy deck ...
Mace threw his knife, but the quake nudged him and the blade glanced off down the sloped channel, raising sparks and then disappearing into the small black mouth of the displacer.
The quake put Durell off balance and Carter slammed a right hook into the stock of the Steyr TMP. Bullets chewed a groove through the alloy, ricocheting off as flattened sparking pellets. Carter lashed out, connecting as the Dreadnought shook again—and Durell took several steps back as Carter’s fury returned tenfold. Carter climbed to his feet and launched a kick that sent the gun clattering across the deck.
‘What is a KillChip?’ he hissed.
Durell paused then, head tilting to one side as he surveyed Carter with an expression of concern. ‘You are too late to stop the Warhead now, Carter. Soon, EDEN will start to detonate across the globe. They will
all
die. I am assured that it is quite painful.’
‘What
the
fuck
is a KillChip?’
‘Ask it.’
‘What?’
Durell smiled wolfishly as within the sloped channel leading to the displacer there came huge screeches of stressed alloy, tearing metal, the squeal of bending panels under the onslaught of heavy, violent claws ...
Mace took a step back, readying his second knife—
And then the voice eased into Carter’s head. The voice was cool, and soft. It reminded Carter of autumn days in a cemetery full of wind-blown brown and orange leaves; it reminded him of a cold grey neatly chiselled tombstone, smooth and sterile; it reminded him of the first dry rattle of soil on a freshly lowered coffin, his father’s coffin, his mother’s coffin, his brother’s coffin, his lover’s coffin.
‘I
am a KillChip
,’ said Kade in his mind. There was no arrogance there, no violence, no hatred; all the things that Carter had come to associate with Kade had vanished like morning mist under a freshly risen sun. There was just simplicity: there was just
fact.
‘A Quantell Systems v2.1 KillChip Implant. I am a blend of organics and computing technology; when Quantell scientists created the original KillChip systems
,
it was found that genetic matter could stabilise unwanted side effects—the organic splicers allowed the human brain to accept the chip more readily, without sending the subject thrashing into fits of respiratory or coronary arrest. Several KillChips were tested on humans before the project was disbanded by the Quantell Division out in the Saudi desert. This project was originally initiated by Spiral.
‘
‘So you are a computer program?’ Carter’s internal voice held no emotion. He was unreadable.
‘I am an AI,’
said Kade gently.
‘And my core mission is to kill. To make you kill. To turn you into a super-soldier, into the most fearsome warrior who ever lived.’
‘And that is why you kill women? And children? Why you take such fucking delight in the mutilation of human flesh? Of Nex flesh? Does it even
matter
to you?’
‘
Yes. Women. Children. Puppies. Carter, they are just flesh and bone. They are just targets. I am AI—I have no emotions. I have a job to perform, and I do that fucking job well. You may cleanse the blackboard of your guilt, Carter. You were never to blame ... I feed you, I take your pain, I push you on where others would falter. Carter, I am the best fucking mother you ever had. I am the best father you never knew. I am the best fist-fuck you could ever endure. I am the best cunt you will ever mount. I am your dark side. I am Kade.
‘
From out of the displacer scoop came Jam, his claws bleeding from the tearing of panels, his slitted copper eyes swivelling in a frenzy to fix on –
Mace.
‘You!’ he breathed. Mace, now without his knives, turned towards the ranks of Nex as Jam pounded forwards, leapt and picked Mace up in his claws. Mace screamed then, a high-pitched insect shrilling sound as Jam’s muscles contorted like huge coils of steel cable under glistening black armour. Carter frowned, watching open-mouthed, not quite sure what Jam was doing, what terrible force he was exerting until, suddenly—
Mace’s body split in half at the hips, a loud
crunch
reverberating around the deck as down below the earthquake roared and once more the Dreadnought shook and rolled, its deck swaying and vibrating. Mace’s body came apart, trailing his spinal column and long streamers of flesh, a spaghetti of veins and arteries and tendons, stretching and snapping as Jam threw both halves of Mace aside and away, to stand there flushed with dark gore, triumphant, drenched in crimson, bathed at last in his torturer’s blood. In revenge.
Then his head came around to face Durell—and Carter’s stunned, tensed frame.
Jam charged at Durell as Carter sank slowly to the deck on his knees, his mind whirling, pounding him with pain. The pain of Kade. The pain of the implanted KillChip. The pain of a million deviant memories. His hands lifted and he stared at them dumbly, and then covered his face as images flickered through his mind ... scenes from Egypt, Belfast, the Siege of Qingdao, the London Riots, Poland Ridge, the Grey Death and the Tanker Runs, the Battle of Cairo7 ... the Nex and the mercs he had slaughtered ... blood on his hands... blood in his eyes ... so much fucking blood ...
Jam and Durell clashed. Claws slashed, and they pounded one another with a hundred blows until Durell suddenly whirled and slammed Jam down onto the alloy deck, which crumpled and dented under the sheer force of the impact. Jam vomited blood into a huge pool, and Durell grabbed Jam’s triangular head between his clawed hands and heaved and dragged the ScorpNex across the deck towards the edge of the Dreadnought—and the distant drop to the vast rumbling landscape far below—