Biohell (2 page)

Where is it?
he thought. Alcohol tortured his
senses. Mocked him. Jeered him.

Where is it?

Keenan feathered the brakes. The
powerful headlight picked out the cone of a side-tunnel, and Keenan squeezed
the front brake hard, went up on his front wheel and kicked the back of the
bike wide around into the opening. He shuffled backwards, killing lights and
engine. Stepping off the bike, he dropped to one knee and lifted a skull-sized
rock. He could hear the pursuing bikes thundering close—fast. Keenan’s eyes
narrowed. Gone were pain and alcohol and bad memories; and fear. Here, now,
everything converged on this moment of destruction.

Lights danced a strobe.

One bike flickered past, howling.

The second approached, and Keenan
hurled the rock with devastating effect. The bike jigged, was slammed sideways,
and rider and machine spun in a terrifying embrace of sparks and roars and
high-pitched banging squeals. Flesh and moving machinery merged. Blood sprayed
in thick streamers. Skin became spaghetti. Man and machine became one, spun in
a wild dancing flurry of churning ripping chain and rock splinters and torn
alloy. Fuel pissed over man and rider... as ignition
clicked
causing a
bloom of fire to engulf this sudden thrashing unwilling cyborg. The explosion
boomed. The assassin and his flaming steed were consumed, engulfed, exploding
in a shower of fire and red-hot shrapnel, to come finally, slowly, to rest
further down the tunnel in a groaning lump of molten metal and flesh and flame.

The lead assassin slowed his
bike, glancing back as his comrade disintegrated. Then his head snapped forward
to witness walls disappear... and he was soaring over a high curved bridge only
two feet wide, a slick cambered arc of smooth polished rock which fell away to
either side, dropping into a deep and terrifying chasm. The killer slowed his
bike, wary, then stopped, boot touching down, machine gun coming up and around
as he looked ahead, then back, to the inferno raging in the tunnel mouth.

Keenan burst from the wall of
fire, head low, KTM roaring. The killer drilled a short burst of bullets and
realised Keenan’s sudden, aggressive intention; he opened his own bike, shot
off across the massive arcing bridge as Keenan’s front tyre came within inches
of the assassin’s bike.

Together they howled across the
chasm, symbiotes, bikes wailing, caressing, animal roars booming from high rock
walls. The narrow bridge twisted, turned, rose and fell like an incredible
roller-coaster. Tyres squealed and squirmed inches from a long dark fall into
merciless oblivion.

Keenan, face grim, pushed his
bike to the limit... then suddenly backed off, brakes on hard, leaving trails
of juddering rubber as he hunkered down and back to give the bike more
traction, more stopping power. The KTM slithered, and the assassin recognised,
too late, the crumbling gap in the bridge. He hit brakes out of reflex, machine
shuddering as it went into a spark-showering low-side... where it sailed
silently off the edge, and down into the gaping maw.

Immediately, the bike vanished.

Dragged down by the bony fingers
of the abyss.

The assassin slid along the
bridge, leathers hissing, hands and boots struggling for grip. He hit the lip,
where fingers snagged crumbled edges and he flipped, legs kicking over, to slam
against the vertical rock wall. He hung there, breathing harsh, then panicked
for his gun as Keenan edged forward.

The killer’s gun was gone.

Keenan made a tutting sound, then
seated himself cross-legged at the edge of the precipice. He smiled
reassuringly at the assassin, and drew a long sleek blade from his boot. He
toyed with it for a few moments, then tapped the blade close to the assassin’s
fingers.

“Who sent you?”

No answer.

“I’ll ask you one more time. Then
my patience dies. When that happens, I’ll start removing your fingers. Who sent
you?”

Laughter erupted, and Keenan was
shocked to realise the creature before him wasn’t human. Scowling, he reached
out and tugged free the killer’s helmet—to stare into narrowed, blood-red eyes
in an oval face of... what appeared to be diseased, pitted metal, like old
corroded iron. But this was no machine, it was a—

Shit,
thought Keenan.
It’s a junk.

The corroded alloy nose was a
small nub, and the lipless mouth opened like flowing liquid metal to reveal a
dull silver interior and row upon row of tiny, triangular teeth. A forked
tongue flickered against black, pus-oozing gums, and Keenan had to fight a primeval
instinct not to take a hurried scramble back. This
junk
was a mutation
of a once proud alien species; intelligent, noble, creative, the self-professed
builders of a new Utopia. Now junks were a degenerative pestilence from the
diseased badlands and toxic wastes of the lethal ex-colony world of Twisted
Eden. Or they had been, before their extermination.

Junks were terminally diseased, a
living breathing biohazard with devolved brains and a dedication to nothing
more than
death.
Across the Quad-Gal they were classified as vermin, a
scourge, to be exterminated on sight lest they poison every living, breathing
creature that walked and talked.

Now, however they were extinct.

Or so everybody thought...

The junk laughed, a hollow
crackling sound. Its blood-red eyes sparkled.

“You want to know who sent me?”
The voice was high-pitched, and hurt Keenan’s ears like razors on glass. Keenan
sat, shocked. Junks brought nothing but plague and death and desolation. They
had devolved intelligence devoted to murder. They were a toxic
embarrassment,
and only a madman would employ them... for they were a plague, a pandemic,
a virus... and to introduce them to a planet like Galhari was sheer bloody
insanity. The junks were so utterly contaminated that, thousands of years
earlier, they had been known to wipe out entire colony worlds by the simple act
of breathing.

“Yes.” Keenan was trying hard not
to inhale. He studied the pitted, acid-etched face. There were no emotions.
Nothing he could understand. It wore a blank mask.

“You will find out, my friend.
Soon enough.” The twisted alien met Keenan’s gaze... as it released its grip,
kicked itself back, and vanished into the dark...

Wearily, Keenan climbed to his
feet and moved from the spot. He took a long soothe from his Jataxa flask, and
with head down, thoughts tumbling, and the pain from the bullet score beginning
to nag at him with grinding pulses, he headed back to the quarry.

~ * ~

Keenan
crouched before the dead, chest-caved junk, studying the creature. Distantly,
he could hear the drone of a chopper and the noise grated his senses like a
garrotte. With his knife, he reached out and prised open the junk’s crushed
flesh. He gazed into the excised cavity with its broken, three-prong ribs and
strange, brightly coloured internal organs which glittered like molten jewels.
I
wonder if the history books were right?
With a swift cut he levered out the
junk’s miniaturised grey heart on the end of his knife, grasped it, and it
squirmed, almost crawling, to nestle in his hand like a slimy, cold eel. He
sliced the sausage-like heart down its fibrous centre, and squeezed free a
small black coin.

“Shit. So it is real.”

Keenan lifted the coin, staring
at the smooth gloss disk. This was the junk’s SinScript. It contained an
encrypted list of the semi-sentient alien’s
instructions.
Where it came
from. Its destination and priorities. A program, of sorts. A puzzle for the
brave and the foolish. Legend had it the SinScript contained not just the junk’s
life,
but a ghost-scrawl of its
future.
What it would do. What it
might achieve. A forecast. A damn
prophecy.

Swiftly, Keenan sat back on his
heels and used his Combat K PAD to ignite the corpse. As smoke rolled to the
sky he moved away, crouching, and watched passively as the junk burned. Black
fumes billowed, and there, amidst the barren quarry-scape of Galhari, amongst
chunks of jagged stone, house-sized boulders, towering cliffs of diagonal
sparkling lodes, this whole thing, this attack, these creatures, it just seemed
wrong.
Keenan shook his head. Junks. Filthy, toxic junks. What the hell
were they doing on Galhari? What did they want?

Keenan shivered... his eyes
lifting to the horizon where he could just distinguish a thick column of smoke.
Something
clicked
in his soul and a coldness crept over him like ants.
Keenan stood. Glanced down at his boots. He could see tiny stones vibrating,
and suddenly the whole
world
seemed to tremble as a vast noise
approached, a massive, mammoth booming which swept across the sky and Keenan
looked up, back, as ten, twenty,
fifty
military K Freighters filled the
sky with their offensive elongated bulks, cruising overhead and blocking the
sky, filling Keenan with horror.

“No.”

Keenan ran to his bike, fired the
engine and screamed off across loose stone. The three junks he’d killed hadn’t
been assassins. They were a scouting party. This was an...

Keenan’s grimace was darker than
a junk’s soul.

This was an invasion.

~ * ~

Patient Information
Leaflet

BIOMOD CAPSULES 0.2
mg

©NanoTek Corporation

KEEP ALL BIOMODS OUT
OF THE

REACH OF CHILDREN.

REMEMBER: Only a
doctor or Biomod

Sales Representative
can prescribe this

biomod medicine/
human/alien upgrade. It

should never be given
to anyone except the

person it has been
prescribed for. It may

harm them in a
grotesque and horrific way.

BEFORE YOU TAKE YOUR
BIOMOD

PLEASE READ THIS
LEAFLET

CAREFULLY
.
This leaflet contains
a brief

summary about your
biomod capsules 0.2

mg. For full details
please visit

www.NanoTek.com/biomod

YOUR BIOMOD

Your
biomod comes in the form of a capsule (although they can also be obtained in
liquid suspension for oral or intravenous absorption, or in an anal application
pack*). Each capsule contains 0.2 mg (including carrier) of the active
ingredient
Trilidium ReXexate
. Each capsule also contains lactose
monosodrate, ionising organo-starch and magnesium bio-stearate.

The
capsule is made from gelatine and contains the colours Erythrosin (E127),
Indigo Carmine (E132), Titanium Dioxide (E171) and Iron Oxide (E172). Biomod
capsules are available in blister packs of 1 and 3 capsules dependant on
genetic modifiers, and come with an external controlling console made from
recycled hardcore plastic, called a Controller Pad. When you have completed
your biomod (or the expiry date has been reached), please dispose of the
console in the NanoTek Recycle Bins which can be found in most high-street
shops and supermarkets Quad-Wide.

HOW DOES YOUR BIOMOD
WORK?

Your
biomod is a measurement of Nano Robots, called “nanobots”, or Biological
Modules, “bio-mods” which enter an organism and are controlled by a small
programmable console. Most biomods are SF Grade—Specific Functional. For
example, SF Grade FR biomods (fat reducer) are used specifically in the loss of
weight for the patient, or an SF Grade PE biomod (penis enlarger) is used to
increase the size of a patient’s garbage. More expensive are the biomod
WildMods—which are capable of multi-functional activity within any human or
alien organism. For example, a WM Grade AC biomod (anti-cancer) can be used to
kill cancer cells in all forms and operate within a system for a specified time
period (usually on contract, and paid for by filling in the monthly direct
debit mandate enclosed with this information pack) and will protect against
further developments of cancer. The WM Grade VP biomod (vanity pack) can be
used to change hair colour, reduce (or increase) fat content, increase or
reduce sizes of body parts (including breasts, although this can be purchased
as an SF upgrade single application ‘tit pack’), improve skin tone, change skin
colour, increase lip size, lengthen finger, nails, etc, etc.