Carter grinned. ‘There’s no such fucking thing,’ he said, and drilled the Nex’s face full of metal.
‘Carter!’
Mongrel’s voice was tinged with panic. Carter sprinted up the incline and dropped to his belly. He caught the muzzle flash of guns firing from the edge of the house, and crawled forward until he was beside an old, crumbling outbuilding.
The sounds of automatic fire halted.
Carter calmed his breathing, and wiped a speck of blood from the back of his glove.
‘Carter!’ came the call again. More sub-machine-gun fire - and Carter realised that both Nex had pinned Mongrel down. He sprinted forward, using trees and ferns for cover, past the farmhouse. Mongrel had to be in the shit—
To call Carter’s name?
Out loud?
Carter veered right, ducking under tree branches. His carbine juddered in his grip, cutting one Nex in half. The other whirled, and as Mongrel’s bullets tore into its chest with metallic blows Carter lifted his M24 and put ten bullets in its head, hammering it to the soft ground where it lay still, blood weeping from its wounds.
Silence fell.
Cordite smoke was smothered by the rain, which fell softly.
Mongrel sprinted to Carter, a look of deep shock on his face.
Carter checked his weapon, then sighted off among the trees, checking for further signs of enemy movement.
‘Thanks,’ panted Mongrel, fishing for a new magazine in his belt. ‘They nearly fucking nailed me.’
Carter said nothing, merely looking off through the rain.
‘They much faster than I remember,’ muttered Mongrel sombrely. ‘I not fucking hit them! Fired whole magazine at them but nothing, not hit one fucking thing ...’
‘Something’s definitely wrong,’ said Carter softly. ‘I can feel it in my bones. We have become complacent... but these Nex, they were not some soft target.’
‘I’ll listen to your advice next time,’ said Mongrel.
‘Just don’t be so fucking eager to jump in boots first, mate. This ain’t a fucking game.’
They moved across to the farmhouse, scouting left and right. Standing in the doorway, Mongrel initiated his ECube. This Sp1_plot was a large armoury - as distinct from some of the more moderate stashes that were located in other parts of the world. This was an Sp1_plot specifically used for AA clearance - WarClearance.
There came a distant mechanical noise, a soft whirring sound and the interior of the farmhouse folded free to reveal a wide metal ramp leading down. Mongrel walked down the ramp, boots echoing hollowly on the rain-slick alloy, and Carter followed, carbine ready for action in case of nasty surprises within.
‘I’ve not been here before,’ said Mongrel.
‘I have ... before the TankerRuns; me and Jam had a mission - a big Demolition.’ He smiled grimly as he was swallowed by the earth and the clever intersections of alloy ramp folded above him to leave the interior of the ruined farmhouse exactly as the two men had found it.
Tooled up with weapons and supplies, Carter moved through the huge alloy bunker and said, ‘Mongrel, grab that end of the sheet.’ Mongrel obliged, and they hauled the heavy tarpaulin from the Comanche. They stood lost in wonder for a moment as they stared at the machine’s matt-dark roughly camouflaged flanks. Missiles were already in place, and Mongrel wheeled a KTM LC7 stealth bike free of its stand and checked the machine for fuel. ‘We taking one or two?’
‘Two,’ said Carter, lighting a cigarette. ‘You never know when we might have to split. Double the firepower. And we can still carry plenty of missiles.’
‘You really out for fight this time, aren’t you?’
‘Stakes are fucking high,’ said Carter coldly.
They spent a few more minutes checking out the KTM motorcycles, fired them into life a few times and checked the on-board guns and fuel. Then Mongrel hitched the two machines beneath the Comanche as Carter rolled four missiles across the stone floor with a clattering of steel against stone and stood them in the corner, red nose cones menacing in the gloom of the bunker’s emergency lighting.
‘Weapons of death,’ rumbled Mongrel, staring at the missiles with a strange look on his face - a mixture of distaste and pleasure. Carter merely nodded, cigarette held limply between his lips, squinting as the smoke stung his eyes.
Within minutes they were ready. They had checked their carbine magazines and tooled up with extra
-special
weapons, advanced first-aid kits and many other supplies that they thought they might need. Some they stuffed into packs, other equipment they packed into the Comanche.
Climbing on board, they settled into their positions. Carter flicked a few switches and watched the glow of instruments light up in a glittering array. He pulled free his rolled-up balaclava and settled the insect-like HIDSS over his head.
- Battle data initiated
,
came a soft smooth female voice in his skull.
- All weapon systems primed.
- Targeting sequences aligned.
- Your Comanche is ready for battle.
‘Ready for action?’ Carter said.
‘Always ready,’ rumbled Mongrel.
Carter punched a button and above them the interior of the derelict farmhouse folded into a tunnel of alloy panels that cleared them a vertical path. With engines whining, then increasing in pitch to a dull roar, Carter focused on his displays and eased the Comanche up from the ground, nose lifting slightly higher than the tail. Alloy panels passed his vision, followed by the damp moss-covered bricks of the old farmhouse. Then they were up into the dark and the rain.
Behind, the alloy panels fell neatly and precisely back into place.
‘Phew ...’ breathed Mongrel, rubbing at his eyes. ‘I hate vertical take-off.’
‘That’s nothing. Look down there.’
Mongrel glanced down - just as distant automatic fire punched through the darkness and bright tracer-round streaks sped towards them.
‘Nex?’
‘Hmm,’ said Carter, arming the mini-gun. Its mechanism whined as it spun into action. Carter lifted the Comanche up into the broiling dark clouds, where it hovered for a moment. Then it dived, engines howling, towards the dark mass of woodland below and Carter pulled the trigger. Hundreds of heavy-calibre bullets cut and punched through leaves, branches and Nex - bodies were mashed and pulped into the Welsh soil as the Comanche’s nose lifted. The dark war machine banked with a howl and sped off into the night, mini-gun smoking and glittering rain-slick rotors thumping with the rhythmical thrumming of precision engineering.
‘How many you hit?’
Carter shrugged. ‘Not enough. But it’ll give the fuckers something to consider as they plan their next move.’
They sped on in silence, the Comanche vibrating with restrained power. Carter guided it south, and within minutes they hit the Bristol Channel, glass-black under the canopy of night. The Comanche dipped low along the coast, coming up over Exmoor and hugging the ground as it sped on at insane speeds. Carter lifted the chopper high through clouds and rain as they passed over the M5, a solid snake of gridlocked traffic, lights stretching off in skeins of immobile metal.
‘What’s going on down there?’
‘Probably a knock-on effect from the quakes ... is there any sitrep on them?’
Mongrel pulled free his ECube and scanned for a few moments, battered face lit by a ghostly blue. ‘London was the most heavily hit - some coincidence, no? A series of quakes smashed across south coast, from Kent to Devon, and also in Manchester and Glasgow ... fuck, looks to me like most of United Kingdom has been hit...’
‘What about the rest of Europe?’
Mongrel nodded. ‘Lot of seismic activity - Europe affected, Africa, Middle East, Russia, China ... something very fucking wrong here, Carter.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Carter said bitterly, picturing Natasha’s face.
The Comanche powered on low over the English Channel, across France, Germany, and then to Switzerland. Carter found himself gazing down and remembering events from only a couple of days before when life had seemed so good and he had been complaining about his party lifestyle.
‘You fucking fool,’
mocked Kade.
‘Yeah, like I need you to remind me.’
‘And look at the big hero now, rushing off to save Jam ... you’ll end up getting us both killed, Carter, you big pussy. This gig is an arse-fuck and you fucking well know it
—’
‘Leave me be.’
‘Don’t come crying to me when you’re dead in a shell hole with your brain full of Nex metal, just like
—’
Carter frowned at the sudden silence. ‘What’s wrong? What are you not telling me?’
Kade remained silent, brooding, and then Carter felt him depart. It was like a weight lifted from the inside of his brain.
‘You all right?’
Carter glanced round at Mongrel, who was staring at him strangely, concern in his dark eyes. Carter nodded, taking a deep breath and calming his battering heart.
‘Yeah, never felt better. We’ll be passing near the Kamus soon ...’
‘A wonderful sightseeing opportunity,’ snapped Mongrel. ‘Just great for the kiddies.’
Carter laughed then, a short sharp bark, and took another deep breath. Tiredness was creeping up on him but he pushed it away. Mongrel was no pilot - and so Carter had to keep going on reserves of adrenalin and energy that he had forgotten he had.
‘We need to refuel?’
Carter gazed out, down at the distant mountain that lay below, glittering with ice. ‘No. We’ll get to Slovenia without a problem - and if we’re desperate for fuel there are stocks at the Kamus. Spiral keep an S1_plot there now.’
‘So I heard. Not happy about that.’
Carter turned again, helmet tilting sideways. ‘You there when the troubles kicked off?’
‘Da.’
Mongrel nodded. ‘Me and Slater, and a few others - we found some of the bodies.’
‘Was it ever explained?’
‘Was it fuck,’ snorted Mongrel. ‘And even if they’d found out what sent them people crazy, blowing each other’s fucking heads off with shotguns, do you think they’d tell us humble squaddies about it? Hah. I spit on the Kamus. It bad place. Carter, there some things in this world we don’t understand - we claw our way into space but there still a million secrets here on the planet ... things we will never understand and never explain. And that mountain, where they build the Kamus complex - it bad place, Carter, real bad place.’
They flew on in silence through glittering clear skies.
Carter landed the Comanche under cover of night, thirty kilometres away from Jam’s last recorded ECube coordinate. The rotors spun down, making the surrounding trees thrash wildly, and the air was warm and humid with the promise of a brewing storm.
Engines hissed and clicked, the Spiral agents dumped their kit on the ground and jumped free, and Mongrel unlocked one of the KTMs and wheeled the bike across the grass, kicking its stand into place and placing his hands on his hips. He took several deep breaths and smiled a warm smile.
‘I love Europe. I love this place! Smells like home!’
Carter frowned. ‘Where exactly
is
home for you, Mongrel?’
‘Ahh!’ He tapped his nose, dark eyes hooded.
‘No, really, where do you come from?’
‘Eastern part of Europe.’
‘Which country? Europe is a big place.’
‘I big guy! Ha! I come from lots of places. Well travelled, you might say. Son of a Thousand States.’
Carter lit a cigarette and rubbed at his tired eyes, drawing deeply on the weed and coughing heavily. ‘Like that, is it? Right, I’ll get a brew on, then get my head down for an hour ... I can’t remember the last time I slept rather than being simply unconscious. You up for stag?’
‘Da,
Carter, you get some shut-eye. I’ll guard.’
Mongrel patted the weapon and glared off into the surrounding trees.
They sat, each with a half-pint mug of sweet tea, a small pan of water bubbling between them on a tiny frame heated by a hexi-block. The Comanche squatted behind them, a terrible dark machine, engines still hot. Around them long grass waved in the wind, and the last dying scents of autumn invaded their nostrils, soothing their souls and transporting their minds - at least temporarily -away from the horrors of the recent earthquakes.
‘I need you to tell me about the machine,’ said Carter softly, after finishing his fourth cigarette and most of his tea. He dropped in another teabag and five spoons of sugar, and gently poured water from the bubbling pan.
Mongrel, who was still staring off into the trees, his M24 carbine ready for action, gave a small sideways glance at Carter.
‘What you need to know?’
‘Everything.’
‘I already tell you.’
‘No,’ said Carter, cold eyes fixing on Mongrel’s face.
‘Fucking
everything.’
Mongrel gave a little laugh, and scratched his cheek with dirt-crusted fingernails. ‘Ahh,
fucking
everything. That’s different, then.’ His face became a little more sombre and he stared off, steaming brew in one hand, other nursing his sub-machine gun. ‘We were on SAD mission in Nicaragua - one of world’s most active earthquake zones. Odd, that, no? We in northern mountains east of town called Ocotal. We were scoping out a silver mine, where several Nex apparently seen trying to break in one night. It was hot, humid, I was relaxing while Jam was on stag ... next thing I know I fucking staring straight up at Nex. He look surprised to see us, that for sure, in our little bivvy. Jam took bastard out with single bullet between the eyes. Dropped fucker there on spot while I was still having horny dreams about air hostess on the flight over Caribbean.’