Biohell (11 page)

The shotgun lifted and twin
snarls screamed across the steel jetty. Tag was picked up and hurled backwards
with incredible force. He slammed the dockside wall, leaving a huge red smear
on alloy bricks, and with eyes filled with questions and tears as he scrabbled
at his own destroyed chest he slid to the ground and was, eventually, finally,
still.

“... if you have bad blood, you
have bad blood. And there’s no educating some people.”

Keg rounded on Franco. He was
shaking—with fear, and rage. A bomb awaiting detonation.

“What you doing?” he screamed.

Calm, Franco moved forward and
stared down at Slick. “He deserves better than this.”

“He’s a scumbag!” bellowed Keg,
and Franco watched as the man’s edge of fear was replaced by anger; like a
vessel filling to the brim. “He’s a dreg. A lowlife zero-cred nobody. And I’m
going to kill him...”

Keg lurched forward.

Franco’s shotgun lifted, and Keg
stopped.

“I think you were right.” Franco’s
voice was soft. Low. Dangerous. “For a while there, I did lose my balls. Went
soft. Lost some of my
fire.
But not in the way you understand it. To
you, ten blokes kicking shit out of an unconscious man is... heroic. To me,
that’s just feeble. Weak, you understand? The mark of the true coward. Gangs.”
He laughed. “I
spit
on them.”

Keg lifted his own shotgun. Ten
metres separated the two men. Franco’s eyes gleamed.

“I’m going to murder you,” breathed
Keg, lifting his own D5 with threatening menace.

“You ever been under fire, son?”
Franco smiled.

Keg pulled twin triggers, and the
shotgun snarled, shells pounding the air and whistling over Franco’s shoulder.
Franco did not flinch. Did not
blink.

Franco’s shotgun
boomed,
and
Keg’s head was taken clean off leaving a headless corpse standing, fingers
twitching as blood fountained and pitter-pattered onto the steel jetty. First,
Keg’s gun clattered to the ground. Then his legs folded at the knees, and he
hit the docks with a damp slap.

“I have,” muttered Franco, “and
it ain’t a nice feeling. But hey, you get used to it. Right?” He holstered his
D5 on his back, bent, and lifted Slick in stocky, powerful arms. He carried the
unconscious man to the back seat of the Merc and laid him out.

Slick’s eyes opened in puffed
slits. He forced a grin through his broken face. “Thanks, man,” he croaked.

“Anytime,” nodded Franco.

“Why did you do it? Why save me?”

“The Nail_blade. You’re Combat K.”

“Yeah. Slick Guinness.”

“Franco Haggis.”

“I’ve heard of you. You’re...” he
coughed, and struggled into a seated position. “You’re a
legend.”

“Am I?” Franco nodded. “Yeah. I
suppose I am.”

For the next few minutes Franco
checked Slick over. He gave him some adrenalin and vitamin boosters, a drink,
and a stab of painkillers from the Merc’s first-aid kit. Franco moved to Tag,
dragged the man by his boots and tossed him into the Blood River. The body sank
instantly. Franco dragged the headless corpse of Keg, tossing this in as well.
He found Keg’s head, and with a mighty kick sent it sailing out over the
blood-red waters.

He returned to Slick carrying
spare D5 shotguns and an ammunition pouch. Slick was standing beside the
Mercedes groundcar now, breathing deeply, and rolling his neck. Franco tossed
him a weapon; which Slick caught in lacerated hands.

“Why did Voloshko want you dead?”

“I shagged his wife.”

“Ahh. But... he’s about a
hundred,
ain’t he?”

“Maybe that’s why she needed my
sport,” said Slick. “Listen. Franco. Really. Thanks. You don’t know me, and you’ve
stuck your neck out. I just want to tell you... I’m a good guy. I just hope you
don’t end up regretting the help you’ve kindly offered...”

“Nah! It’ll be reet,” said
Franco, beaming. He pulled out a small bottle, removed a white pill, and
swallowed it with a wince. “You’re Combat K. That’s all I need to know. And as
for those two dreg chickenheads... they had it coming, mate. Believe me.”

Time to move on, thought Franco.
Time to take Mel and start a new life. Away from this insanity. Away from this
hell. He shook his head, and nodded to himself. Shit. I’m definitely going
soft.

Distantly, fireworks fired the
sky. They sparkled, exploded in showers. And then—the darkness of the short
city night was unzipped and showered by a billion explosions shooting to
illuminate the horizon. Crackles, zips and pops echoed and reverberated. Smoke
filled the sky in a 360-degree rotation. Franco spun around, eyes taking in the
superb extravagance of opulent fiery celebration which seemed to cover the
entire
world.

“And so The Quantum Carnival
begins,” said Slick. “Man, I’m just glad I’m alive to see it.”

Franco nodded. It was like... a
sign! A sign that his life had changed, been ripped apart like the night sky
before him! And yes,
he
had changed. He no longer wanted to live on The
City. No longer wanted to work with violence. And Syndicates. And guns. He
twitched. He felt an unerring desire to start gardening.

Inside the Merc, the kube buzzed.

Franco and Slick looked at each
other.

It buzzed again; louder, more
urgent.

“You going to answer that?” said
Slick, voice low.

Franco lifted the kube. “Hello?”

“Franco. This is Mr Voloshko. I
don’t quite know how to say this, so I’ll just say it. Because this was your
first kill mission, we were monitoring the event—you know, for future training
exercises, your own health and safety, etcetera. However, it would
appear
that
you’ve killed your two work colleagues and teamed up with the man I want dead.
Would you say this is a fair appraisal of the situation?”

“Ahh.” Franco frowned. His
eyebrows wiggled a little. “Yeah. I suppose that sums it up nice.”

“You have one last chance to
redeem yourself, Francis. Kill Mr Guinness. Now.”

Franco considered this. “Fuck
you?” he suggested.

“As you will.” Voloshko’s voice
was crushed ice. The kube went dead.

“What now?” said Slick; he looked
quickly around, eyes reflecting the coloured crackle of fireworks.

“Ahh relax,” said Franco, waving
his hand. “Voloshko’s just some tired old ponce who can’t please his wife. All
we need to do is...”

An engine roared, loud even above
the sounds of a billion firecrackers eating the sky, and over the nearby
dockside buildings rose an Apache F52 Gunship, gleaming in its urban camouflage
cloak, rotors whining and twin minigun eyes spinning with the distinct clicking
sounds of a building fury.

Then, there came a different
roar, and a missile detached and Franco and Slick sprinted with arms
piston-pumping, to dive, landing and sliding on their bellies in the dirt as
the missile slammed over them, connected with the Merc groundcar and pounded it
upwards into oblivion. A fireball exploded with a cackle, and purple smoke
rolled into the sky blocking out the carnival fireworks.

Slick glanced at Franco. “You
were saying?”

“Run for it?” suggested Franco.

“Sounds good to me.”

They sprinted through the smoke,
Franco’s sandals crunching Merc debris as miniguns roared and bullets chased
them spitting
puffs
of concretealloy at their heels. The two men slammed
between towering warehouses lining the old Jumper Wharf.

Behind, the Apache bellowed like
a caged beast.

Its nose dipped...

And slammed towards them, guns
thundering.

~ * ~

CHAPTER 3

NANOTEK

Knuckles,
spaceship-thief, drugsmoke entrepreneur, wheeler and dealer and ducker and
diver, stood on a Sub-C street corner, leaning nonchalantly against a concrete
support stained with streamers of rancid tox. Before him, the traffic was a
solid block of noise and mass and fumes. People writhed down the pavements like
flesh noodles. Noise filled his head. Fumes and scents from a thousand stalls
filled his nose. The mass of people, of traffic, of sheer exhilar8ting bustle
filled his soul like a heady perfume and he smiled, narrow sharp eyes focusing
on the slab of people in order to locate his next
sting...

There. Tourist. Blue hair.
Mini-skirt. High glitter boots. Briefcase. What gave her away was the large map
she carried, occasionally stopping and gawping aimlessly around as if the very
sky itself would proffer directions.

Knuckles pushed off from the wall
and approached slowly, from behind; a predator. The briefcase was a slim white
affair with anti-snatch cabling. As Knuckles approached, he directed the
micro-laser and watched a tiny plume of smoke start to writhe from the cable;
then, with perfect choreography, he leapt and caught the bag as the woman
screeched in pain from sudden laser burn— and took off through the crowd,
weaving and jigging, bouncing and dodging and followed by screams and wails and
he knew he was good and gone, and escaped.

“Wicked!”

Five minutes later he’d rifled
the contents. A thousand gem-dollars and five Good-Cred cards sat snug in his
pants.
Christiane Solomonsson,
read the name on the cards. Knuckles
shrugged, and discarded papers to litter the dark alley around his red gloss
boots. And then, from the bottom of the case, in his groping hand he brought
free a... a vial of
biomods.
He could see they had ZERO registration.
They were unmarked. Untagged. Unconnected to GreenSource. The biomods could not
be traced...

Knuckles, spaceship-thief,
drugsmoke entrepreneur, wheeler and dealer and ducker and diver, rough and
tough, wiser than a prophet, harder than hardcore, bitter and decadent and
cynical before his time, grinned with his ten-year old face. Gr8, he thought.
Th1s could be th3 start of a
n3w
car33r! O:-)

~ * ~

BLACK
AND WHITE NEWS CLIP

The City’s Premier News
Delivery Service

[available in:
print, TV, vid, mail, dig.bath, ident.implant, comm., kube, glass.wail, ggg,
galaxy.net
and eyelid transpose— all for a small monthly fee].

News clip GG/06/12/TBX:

It has been reported by the World Bank
that NanoTek are losing as much as one third of their business to the illegal
biomod industry which has grown over the last three months. In an astonishing
press release to technology industry insiders, NanoTek allowed access to
documentation highlighting financial losses and subsequent projected
acceleration of losses. It would seem pirated biomod use is on the up and up.
Dr Sweeney, MD for NanoTek (Old York) stated, “I cannot believe people are
using the much inferior and highly dangerous illegal capsules which purport to
be biomod technology. Here at NanoTek we follow stringent safety guidelines and
our technology processes are the safest in the business. Illegal capsules are
the equivalent of having a back-street abortion, or an amputation with a rusty
saw. Dangerous, painful, life-threatening, immoral, illegal—and a threat to the
safety and economy of our social structure! I would implore people to use only
NanoTek branded merchandise.” When questioned on the, some would say,
extortionate pricing system for legitimate biomods and a therefore subsequent
understanding for people of limited financial means turning to the much cheaper
hacked versions, Sweeney expounded, “The current pricing structure for biomods
reflects R&D and the expensive chassis components needed for manufacture.
This technology did not invent itself overnight; as such the pricing of this
still ground-breaking technology is high and does include a component of
profit. NanoTek is, after all, a business. But as with all business models, as
take-up escalates so the scale of production will increase and create a more
financially palatable product. However, because of the pirated biomods this is
actually moving away from the consumer. In effect, in the long run, with this
heinous spate of piracies people are effectively cheating themselves.”