‘Come back quickly. I have another
task
for you.’
Durell sat in the darkness, curled on the settee and staring down over New York City. A few fires still burned from the riots earlier that day—but the disturbances had been crushed mercilessly by the JT police squads and Nex Assault Teams. Over five hundred people had died on the streets—and for what?
To wave their pathetic banners opposing the NEP. Voicing their petty concerns—in direct violation of Durell’s order. Orders highlighted and constantly transmitted on the entire range of vid channels, making it clear that opposition to the Nex Enhancement Programme was prohibited.
‘Democracy,’ he hissed. It had a lot to answer for, he thought.
Mace arrived, sliding into the darkness to stand in front of Durell. He looked agitated—an emotion that Durell rarely saw flickering across the fish-white face of his oldest and most loyal subject.
‘Durell, I have a question. A question based on, shall we say, an unreliable source.’ Durell nodded for Mace to continue, and the compact Nex’s finger lifted to rest gently against his narrow lips before he went on. ‘There is talk. Of a warhead—a super-weapon designed and built by Spiral when it ruled and stagnated in its decadent prime. Have you heard of this weapon?’
Durell tilted his head gently. ‘Where did you hear of this?’
‘From the lips of a dying REB. I persuaded her to release her knowledge before she ... unfortunately, my skills are not what they were—old age is creeping slowly into my limbs, and as a result I could not keep her at the brink of life with the steady hand I once possessed.’
Durell smiled. And nodded.
‘So it is true?’ persisted Mace.
‘Worse than true, my friend. Spiral created a weapon so devastating that if they were to initiate it against us, we would do well to survive the onslaught. Our Empire would be toppled. It is our only weakness.’ Durell’s voice had dropped to a low croon, his copper eyes glinting in the darkness.
‘Surely one warhead could not possibly pose such a threat? We have more than fifty armies. We have nuclear-blast-proof Sentinel Towers in nearly every city of the world. And even without Nex forces we now control the JT8s. Even as we speak, they forget their lives under the old rule. Soon we will be all they remember. The Old World will not only have died—it will have been extinguished. We have rewritten the past, Durell—cast it into shadows.’
‘The Warhead is not simply a warhead; it is Evolution Class. An EC Warhead is a
machine
, a prototype of the next generation of intelligent, self-sufficient,
sentient
weapons systems.’
‘Sentient?’
Durell’s eyes sparkled with the reflections of distant fires. A lone machine gun rattled. ‘The Evolution Warhead was a project locked in a development cycle from the same era as the QII and then QIII processors—it followed similar design pathways and used many modules from some of the same programmers who applied their skills to the QIII and, later, QIV systems. I did not think the project was ever completed—because, by its very nature, its design specifications seemed almost impossible. A wet dream of the weapon designers and the military generals.’
‘Tell me more,’ said Mace, with a barely suppressed shiver.
‘The Evolution Warhead was supposed to be a warhead that could have unlimited targets. Once released, it would be completely self-sufficient. It had battery cells that would last a century. It could increase and decrease its own mass and size by accumulation and dissemination of its structural polymorphing chassis. It could reduce its own size and act as a stealth missile, infiltrating anything down to a room-size target by using a discrete global positioning system—not a standard military GPS, but from
its own individual
mainframe. It could—on paper—distil elements from the air, the ground, the sea—and increase its own capacity for speed and destruction. Its chassis was a Shift Unit—it could change shape and purpose and construct its own detonation units, its own independent missiles from
within itself,
like a metal insect giving birth to a progeny of war and destruction. And it was sentient—it had a brain modelled on our previous Quantell technology. It could, ultimately, construct intelligent procedures. It could think for itself.’
‘But it was never created?’
‘No, I thought the project abandoned. Because ...’
‘Yes?’
Durell turned, his dark copper eyes glittering. ‘Because to create a weapon which could assimilate its own miniature but equally devastating nuclear missiles and rain them down like fire on a million chosen targets if so required; to create a machine so incredibly lethal to mankind that it was, in effect, a machine gun that would fire nuclear bombs—with the ability to destroy and destroy and destroy and never, ever stop; to create a weapon with unlimited capacity for detonation ... well, that would show the perverse nature of man, would it not? To build something
guaranteed
to wipe out the entire planet if it was deemed necessary?’
‘Our Sentinel Towers—they are resistant to nuclear blasts.’
‘The Evolution Warhead, once programmed, would analyse its target; it would detect our fail-safes, shed its skin like a serpent, infiltrate the tower and detonate from within. Let me ask you: would one of our Sentinel Towers survive a nuclear explosion that went off
inside
?’
‘They are only braced for impact from outside. But then, this is not a problem—because this warhead does not exist... yes?’
‘If it does not exist, why are the REBS talking about it?’
‘Propaganda? A boost to the morale of a dying unit? Every religion needs its Holy Grail.’
‘And what if the Holy Grail really did exist?’
‘The power for immortality?’
‘Immortality and
immortal destruction
.’
‘I’ll get some people on it,’ whispered Mace.
‘Use the best,’ said Durell, returning to gaze out over New York. He surveyed the rubble, the destruction. ‘I don’t like nasty surprises. And I don’t want to find the Evolution Class Warhead knocking on our back door with my name at the forefront of its digital mind.’
An hour later, the trouble outside had ceased and New York was finally calm.
A door opened on silent hinges, allowing a tiny triangle of yellow light to spill onto the thick carpet. A figure stepped in, and Durell’s slitted copper eyes narrowed for a moment as he recognised the silhouette of Alexis.
I need this, he thought.
She closed the door behind her and moved forward, bare feet padding across the carpet. In the gloom Durell could see she still wore her tight body-hugging black uniform. Her copper eyes moved, focused, came to rest on Durell’s impassive face.
Durell studied her pale oval face as, without a sound, Alexis peeled off her tight uniform and stood with legs slightly apart, arms limp by her sides, fingers flexing slowly as if in anticipation of battle. He noted the hint of moisture on her pastel lips, and the short panting breaths—gentle, almost unheard, but hinting at her deep and desperate
need.
Durell’s gaze dropped, past Alexis’s lifted chin and to the pale skin of her throat, and the small but perfectly rounded breasts. Then lower, his stare moving over her flat stomach and to the black glistening scales which began at the top of her vagina where her pubis gave way to armoured scaling which spiralled and scattered down across her groin and inner thighs. It tightened again into armoured panels which ran in twin glistening strips down the back of her legs to end in sharp points of insect chitin just above her heels.
Durell’s appreciative gaze lifted, following the trail of tiny armoured scales, most black but several glistening with oil-slick rainbow hues. The smell of Alexis’s Nex flesh prickled his nostrils, her scent mingling with his own and forming a natural perfumed bond as Durell finally moved and rose from the settee.
Behind the two, the city glittered. Fire erupted occasionally. A large CityScreen atop a skyscraper flickered with images of LVA, then modern KT weapons, then the NEP in an attempt at enticing normal, everyday people into the joyous union of becoming ... Nex.
The ultimate warrior.
The ultimate soldier.
Protectors of freedom.
Upholders of truth and law and order ...
You know it makes sense ...
‘You wanted me, sir?’ breathed Alexis, her voice soft, husky, her eyes dipping a little as Durell’s dark armoured claw came up to cup her chin. Her eyes lifted to meet his stare and he marked the strength there: the incredible, awesome physical power which she held tightly in check.
Alexis: Durell’s finest Nex assassin, Durell’s most awesome general in this bright new world.
‘Yes,’ he said, his deformed face smiling softly, pallets of chitinous armour sliding across his cheeks under glowing slitted copper eyes. He moved forward a little, felt her body lift towards his—as if offering herself in eager anticipation. ‘And I think you need me as much as I need you.’ It was not a question.
‘It has been a while,’ she soothed, stepping in close as her arms slid neatly inside his heavy rustling robes, moving over the contours of his armoured flanks and to the soft, supple human skin of his back. He tensed for a moment—as he always did—and then slowly relaxed as her long fingers soothed patterns of tenderness across his skin. Durell’s head dropped, and Alexis’s tongue flickered out, tracing a trail across the hard scales of his deformed face and then sliding into the small round hole of his mouth. Their tongues entwined and danced, hers a moist writhing muscle reminiscent of the human from which she was joined, his a black triangulated stump riddled with thick black hairs that prickled like sharp wires. Their tongues mated, Durell’s hairs tickling Alexis’s mucous surface roughly and drawing tiny pin-pricks of blood.
Durell shrugged and his robes fell back, leaving him naked. He moved, stooping with crackles of his armoured spine to lift Alexis so that her feet left the carpet, their mouths still joined in a tender lover’s caress, her taut breasts brushing against his cool slick armour, erect nipples leaving wet oozing trails of grey mammary milk against the protective chemical gel that coated Durell’s armour like a liquid exoskeleton veil.
Alexis groaned, a deep low animal sound, and pressed herself into Durell. He turned, bearing her down to the settee, armoured forearms leaving grooves in the leather as his claws came up and ran gently through her short black spiked hair. Alexis’s legs opened, spirals of protective armour scattering from her cunt to reveal a dark honeyed opening, glistening with pink and blood red and corkscrew trails of bright green as her legs came up and over Durell’s hips. Jagged ridges of plate-chitin poked into Alexis’s calves and as Durell kissed her once more, his tiny triangular tongue darting into her mouth and leaving trails of acid, her long white fingers danced down his chest and across his flat, powerfully muscled abdomen and to the flat area between his legs. She gently prised apart the armoured shields and pushed her fingers inside him, into the pocket of thick gel, feeling his slick penis suddenly flex in her hands, tiny rippling spikes driving like needles into her flesh and drawing blood in twenty different places. She felt the injection of hormones from him, felt his pulsating penis suddenly swell and burst free of his shell and she gazed down lovingly at the throbbing black and purple shaft between her blood-trickling hands. Her head snapped up then, tongue darting to moisten her lips as her breath came in short, eager gasps, copper eyes glistening as one of her hands reached behind him and pulled Durell towards her lust.
Durell entered her hard, and she screamed a high-pitched scream, back arching as her hands clawed at his armour. The spikes rippling across his huge pulsing penis dragged ragged bloody grooves through her vagina; their blood and hormones mixed, and her muscles suddenly constricted in a hugely powerful grip around him—trapping him there, held within bars of sex, locked in place by a need to fuck like a fly caught behind the teeth of a flytrap.
His clawed hands dropped, leaving delicate tentative trails across her quivering oozing breasts, down her flanks and under her buttocks. He inched himself further, pushing hard, enjoying the pain as her clamped muscles fought him ... and then, slowly, they began their insect fuck. They moved with a gentle painful rhythm; pinned onto and into one another, fastened and gripped and locked, injected with stabs of pain and needles of lust. They kissed hard and fast and then slow and gentle, slipping from the settee with soft
thumps
to the thick carpet on platters of their own slick blood and discharged sexual effluvia which oozed from skin pores as their Nex stink enveloped one another. They panted, gazing into one another’s copper eyes, mouths only an inch apart as Durell’s spine crackled softly in rhythm and his claws stripped narrow thin lines of flesh from her flanks, from her breasts, from her tensed and heaving buttocks ...
Locked together, their pace slowed until their writhing, flexing thrusts came at maybe one a minute. They were panting still as they both rose to a slow, grinding, indomitable climax and Alexis began to come first, her mouth opening wide as she emitted a high ululating insect shrill which filled and reverberated around the room. Durell gave one huge and final heave as his twitching penis started to pump, accompanied by a
cracking
sound like the breaking of trampled cockroach shells. They clung together, rolling on the carpet while far below them, in the darkness of NYC, a thousand patrolling Nex soldiers murdered innocent people in breach of the strict curfew laws.