So It Begins Read online

  The squad halted in a vast swathe of curving jungle. Somewhere they could hear a raging waterfall. Keenan glanced at Pippa. “How far to the contact?”

  Pippa smiled at that. Keenan could be so . . . clinical. The contact. The target. The assassination. The taking of a human life, and yeah, OK, that guy was responsible for the deaths of millions according to the unreliable monkeys of QGM military intelligence, but who’s to say they were right? Who gave Combat K the right to play God?

  “Twenty klicks. Northeast.”

  “How far to the Blood River?”

  “Eight hundred and twenty-seven metres. Give or take.”

  “Let’s move out.”

  They eased through the enemy jungle. There had been no early ScoutBot Scan infiltrations or WebCloud relays, because QGM wanted to retain the element of surprise. In and out in three hours. A neat excision.

  It was immensely dark in the jungle, and muted sounds echoed metallic between trees. The sounds were odd, unlike usual jungle noises. Keenan and Pippa exchanged glances, but continued, heightened senses alert to danger, guns rain-slick and slippery in gloved hands. Permatex WarSuits moderated body temperature and kept the stifling jungle humidity from biting…too much. Franco still mumbled curses as he brought up the rear, expertly scanning their back-trail, and expertly watching Pippa’s arse. I wish, he thought sourly. Oh to get my paws on that ripe pair of peaches! But it would never happen, especially as Franco was currently married to an eight-foot mutated zombie super-soldier, once beautiful, now an abomination of pus. He frowned at the memory. It was a long story, a tale of violence and psychopathic biohell.

  The river surprised them, despite electronic warnings. It slammed from the darkness, a muted roaring greeting them instantaneously from the gloom. It was lighter here, out from under the tree canopy, and a rime of green moonlight crept from behind bruised copper clouds. Keenan gave Franco a nod, and the small ginger squaddie knelt in the mud by the side of the river.

  “Do it.”

  “Yeah boss.”

  Franco twisted the small rubber ball, and tossed it into the river on the end of a flexing TitaniumIII cord. The ball gave a crack of ignition, and a hiss, and inflated instantly into a special forces covert boat, nicknamed a Rubber Duck, or Sitting Duck by the more cynical members of the squads. Pippa and Keenan climbed in, guns tracking dark shorelines overhung with skeletal branches. The air crackled with strange, metallic creaking, not unlike the discharge of energy. Pippa gave a shudder.

  “You OK?”

  “I feel like we’re being watched. The PAD states otherwise, although the thing’s playing up—which is unusual. They’re normally good for a billion years. Maybe it’s the high magnetic field? Maybe we’re being dicked with.”

  “Still no life?”

  “No life,” said Pippa. “By that, I mean absolutely no life. This jungle is deader than a crypt. There’s no indigenous life-forms; no birds, no insects. Nothing. I’ve seen more energy in a corpse.”

  Franco jumped in and fired stealth engines, a twin-set of Suzuki Whisper MkIVs. He eased the boat out into the strong tug of the river, and turned against the current. They were headed up-river; deeper into the jungle, deeper into nigritude, deeper into the heart of darkness.

  Franco stared at the gloom. “I don’t suppose there’s any brothels up there?” he muttered.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” snapped Pippa.

  “Pubs? You reckon?” He sounded feebly hopeful.

  “Dickhead.”

  “What about a casino or two? It’s ages since I’ve had a flutter.”

  “Mate, the last time you gambled you lost your damn house. Haven’t you learnt your lesson?”

  “’Twas a simple error of reading the cards. I’ll do better next time, so I will.”

  “Well,” said Pippa carefully, “I don’t see how. After you shot the place up with that K7 shotgun, and dropped a BABE grenade in the manager’s office. Fair blew the place to shit. You’ve been banned from every gambling franchise on The City.”

  “Rubbish! They know that was only little old me playing toy soldiers.” He brightened. “Still. This guy is a king, right? This General Zenab? Showered in gold and jewels by the junks? Treated like royalty?” His eyes went suddenly crafty, as he guided the small submersible through dark channels of foaming river. Rainfall gleamed on his skin, and as green moonlight caught him, he looked quite demonic. Like a devil, sick of sin. Like a twice reanimated corpse. “We might even make a few dollars!” He beamed. “There might be dancing girls in the palace!” He beamed wider, showing his broken tooth from too many drunken bar-brawls.

  Pippa slapped his arm. “You’re a muppet. You need to focus, Franco, and focus hard. This ain’t no game we’re playing. Kee? I told you he’d be a damn liability. I told you to choose somebody else.”

  “Well, charming!” stuttered Franco. “Thanks for your vote of confidence, sweetie.”

  “We might need his detonation skills,” growled Keenan, with a shaded glance. “And you know there’s nobody better with a Bausch & Harris. I’m hoping we can get this gig finished—without getting our hands dirty.”

  They cruised in silence through obsidian shadows. The jungle closed in as the river narrowed, became yet more violent, raging and pounding around black fists of ancient volcanic rock. Quietly, Pippa said, “Never in a million years.”

  They stopped in a small bay of calm water for navigation checks. Pippa was jagging the touch-dials of the PAD, and shook her head. “No good, Kee. There’s something wrong—either with the PAD, or with the whole damn planet.”

  “Leave the pad,” said Keenan. “We’ll use our eyes and ears. Just like the old days on Molkrush Fed.”

  He glanced up, and there, at the edge of the jungle, perhaps five metres away, stood a squad of junks. Four of them. Heavily armed. For what seemed an eternity the two groups faced one another across the expanse of stagnant water, a platter of stinking glass . . . then hell erupted—

  Keenan’s Techrim 11mm was out and pumping in his fist and he dived right, over the edge of the boat. Pippa dropped to one knee, D5 in her gloved hands, booms crashing through the jungle. Franco split left, a Kekra quad-barrel machine pistol in each hand slamming bullets at the squad. The junks, tall and powerful wearing basic electronic leather armour, skin pitted like metal, eyes like pools of blood, short, forked silver tongues flickering in silver mouths like liquid metal—they split with equal skill and speed, their MPKs firing volleys of roaring bullets at Combat K. Everything was a deafening bellow of chaos and confusion. The jungle screamed with concussion and bullets, a distillation of confusion, as Keenan pumped rounds into a junk’s face and watched him stumble back, blood spewing from destroyed eyes, his face a mash of chewed bone and gristle and flapping cheek skin. Franco, yelling, charged with Kekras roaring. Two bullets thumped his WarSuit like hammer blows, knocking the wind from him, slamming his heart with pounding fists but he was on the junk, both guns screaming, aware like the others that junks were insanely tough, hard to kill, real bastards to put down. Their eyes were their Achilles’ heel; shoot out their eyes and death would follow. Franco was on the junk, both boots slamming the stunned, eye-destroyed face and riding him to the ground to crouch beside the writhing figure. The two remaining junks charged Pippa, her D5 still cracking but they absorbed shells in primitive armour and skin and muscle, which rolled like melted wax, reforming, repairing even as it was decimated and Pippa felt panic well in her breast at this seemingly indestructible threat before her…and closing fast. One reached out, took the D5 from her hands and bent it into two discrete parts with a snap and scatter of unspent shells. The junk screamed in her face, a toxic blast of poisonous air that made her weak at the knees, ingested toxins attacking her central nervous system as the second junk turned on Franco and fired a volley of MPK rounds…

  And Keenan was there, Techrim against the junk’s head. “Put her down, shitbag.” The junk turned and grinned at him, blood red eyes narrowing as Keenan
pulled the trigger and the bullet whined through skull and brain, erupting in a mushroom shower of shards and mashed brain-slop. It rammed a fist into Keenan’s chest, slamming him back over the boat in an acceleration of gasping pain and realization that the junk could still operate with a bullet in the head . . . the junk turned on Pippa, who smiled a nasty smile, and slammed her knife into one eye with a downward punch. She ripped the blade sideways, cutting out the junk’s second blood orb and it screamed, a sudden high-pitched shrill, flopping back in the Duck, thrashing as Pippa hurled the blade to embed in the final junk’s armour. It turned from Franco, lying back on the rocks, stunned by bullet blasts in his Permatex. When it glanced at Pippa, Franco reached back and grabbed the first thing which came to hand. His Bausch & Harris sniper rifle, packing high velocity 8.98 medium calibre rounds. At that range, face to face, the weapon was devastating. The rifle gave a thump in Franco’s gloved fists and the junk’s head disintegrated. The body stood for a moment, jiggling, blood a fountain from the jagged neck, then fell flat and dead on the rocks. A thick, evil stench poured from the open neck. An aroma of rotten eternity. The perfume of the junk.

  Franco coughed, and looked to Keenan, who struggled from the water clutching his chest. He felt like he’d suffered a heart attack. Felt like he’d died. “Get back on the boat,” he wheezed, and they all scrambled aboard.

  As they cruised into violent storm waters, wind howling, the heavens pounding their insignificant craft with needles of rain, Pippa gave Keenan and Franco a savage snarl. “We can assume the bastard PAD is well and truly compromised, yeah? We’re on our own, boys.”

  “Just the way we like it,” smiled Franco sardonically.

  The storm died in a sudden rush of warm air, like a dragon blast. As if in response, or perhaps by coincidence, the river became a flat platter, glass, ice. Pippa, now pilot, slowed their cruise to a halt and they sat for a few moments, rocking, listening, peering at the overhanging edges of uncompromising metallic-stinking jungle.

  “Never get out of the boat,” muttered Franco.

  “What?” snapped Pippa.

  “Just something I heard.”

  “How far?” said Keenan.

  “Three klicks. We’re getting close. That’s why we met that little scouting party. Was it an accident, I wonder, or were the bastards looking for us? Maybe they saw the SLAM come in, thought they’d investigate.”

  “To all sensors it’d still look like a meteor strike.”

  “Still,” said Pippa. “I’d want to know what came down twenty klicks from my base of operations. Especially if this place is a Nano-Bomb Factory.”

  “Let’s assume they know we’re here,” said Keenan, mind ticking. “What would General Zenab do? He can read minds, or so we’re told. See through tangled paths of the future. Has he seen his own impending assassination?”

  Pippa stared at Keenan. “That isn’t even funny.”

  “Do you see me laughing? OK. So you’ve got patrols in the jungle, textbook. What about the river? Patrol boats? We’ve not seen anything here. What else could you use?”

  “It’s not deep enough for a sub,” said Franco, frowning.

  “When I went in the river before, this water, it’s not normal. I know it’s red because of mineral deposits, but it was also full of . . . oil, or something. A lubricant. It wasn’t natural.”

  “Is that why we can smell metal?”

  Keenan shrugged. “Not sure. But whatever it is, it may have a purpose. It reminded me of the Terminus5 Shell reactor; remember the bunker? Full of that insane AI bio-wire which ate through your bones and separated a person long-ways out?”

  “I remember,” said Franco, voice low. “You think they may have AI tech?”

  “I always thought the junks low-tech, but . . . we should prepare for anything. This gig stinks like a dead cat.”

  “You want to ditch the boat?”

  “Maybe. I’m considering it.”

  They paused, and something slopped in the river. They glanced at one another. “I saw something,” said Pippa, carefully, hoisting her weapon, nervous now, gun tracking an invisible foe. The river seemed deeper, here, more stable; and yet more threatening at the same time. Like a motionless predator; a hunter waiting to pounce.

  Ripples suddenly drifted away from the Rubber Duck, or at least, from something near it. Pippa stood, alongside Keenan, and they both aimed weapons at the flat surface.

  “I don’t like this,” moaned Franco.

  “Shut up. Pippa, get us out of here.”

  Pippa nodded, and eased them forward. They moved across the water, still as a lake, green-tinged from the moon. Ripples flowed, slapping shores. The engine purred, near-silent, and Pippa angled toward the shore . . . .

  It was this which saved their lives.

  The thing squirmed across the river, surfacing sideways like a sidewinder serpent, a long, bright silver eel as thick as a man’s waist and perhaps thirty or forty feet long. Pippa gasped and Keenan started firing at the creature undulating toward them. Pippa joined him, but their bullets were absorbed with tiny plops as it accelerated, a massive eel that crashed into the Rubber Duck with stunning force, sending all three Combat K soldiers flipping into the river . . .

  Keenan went under, felt something cold and metallic brush his WarSuit, recoil for an instant, then slap him with such force only his armor stopped immediate death through impact. He choked. Everything, all wind and life were knocked from him and yet he forced himself to swim, powerful strokes, toward the shore. He felt the eel’s approach rather than saw it, and dived, twisting, by some miracle passing under the undulating body of thick muscle. He struck out, under the river, fighting strange currents until he clambered up the shore, dripping, panting, muscles screaming like irate fishmongers. Franco was already there, heaving, hands on knees, looking sorry for himself in a hangdog fashion.

  “Where’s Pippa?”

  Franco stood upright, stared out, watched the mercury eel circle their Rubber Duck and suddenly ensnare it, its whole body flipping from the river to wrap around the boat again and again in huge circles, and with a sudden pulse and tug, crushed the boat into a hissing, buckling, pulped oblivion.

  Slowly, Franco pulled free his Bausch & Harris. “She’s there. See. Pippa, Hey!” He waved. She seemed disorientated in the gloom, in the drizzle of light rain, but focused on his words and struck out toward him. However, the eel also heard Franco and turned, writhing in foam as Franco snarled a curse and aimed down the rifle’s sight.

  “You’ll draw attention to us!” snapped Keenan, hoisting his own guns and casting about for enemy.

  “I can’t let her die,” said Franco.

  He fired, a muted thump and the bullet disappeared in the eel’s mass. Pippa powered on, but the eel moved fast for something so big. It gained swiftly. If it caught her, it would crush her without doubt. Franco breathed deep, and fired off another three shots in quick succession. The thump of bullets echoed off, flesh slaps, muted by the jungle.

  “It’s going to kill her,” said Keenan.

  “Not on my watch,” snapped Franco, and began pumping shot after shot after shot into the silver eel, unaware if his bullets had effect, unaware if this thing was something they could kill. What was it? AI? A simpConstruct robot? Organic? Or a meld of all three?

  “Come on!” urged Keenan.

  Franco kept on firing, and the eel suddenly slowed, its sidewinder motion becoming erratic. Pippa reached the shore, but the eel’s tail lunged from blood waters and wrapped around her chest. It dragged her back, and both Keenan and Franco leapt forward, guns thundering and howling into the thick silver body which twitched and pulsed. Pippa screamed, hands straining against the metallic surface. Then her fingers slipped inside, as if entering jelly, and came out, shocked, trailing umbilicals of silver eel strand . . .

  Franco dropped to his knees on the rocks, in the mud, his eyes locked to Pippa’s and reading the pain and suffering there. He pulled a BABE grenade from his be
lt, gave her a wide grin, pulled the pin and plunged his fist inside the eel’s apparently semi-solid body. He pulled free his arm, rocked back on heels, and fell to his arse. He watched as there came a muffled crack. Ripples shuddered along the length of the eel, and it twitched, every molecule vibrating out of synchronization with every other. Then, the creature was still.

  Franco and Keenan dragged Pippa from the strange creature’s embrace, Pippa coughing, holding her chest. Without her WarSuit she’d be a mashed pulp, a skin bag of crumbled bones. Even now, the armor was buzzing warnings; it was seriously damaged, and would fail if it took another impact.

  “I’d say they know we’re here,” said Franco.

  “Let’s move out. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we go home.”

  “I’m beginning to hate this planet,” said Franco, pulling his sulky lip.

  Pippa coughed, and stood. She took several deep breaths. She looked annoyed. More than annoyed. She looked ready to kill. “Let’s go assassinate this bastard,” she said, and hoisted her shotgun with a scowl.

  They moved like ghosts through the jungle. Up close, the trees were metallic, coated in a sheen of oil. They were not living, not organic, but simple machines designed to imitate life. A machine jungle. An army of sentry steel.

  “What kind of freak creates such a place?” said Franco, frowning. It was the waste and pointlessness, more than anything, that offended him.

  “Just keep your eye on the PAD.”

  For the last two klicks they’d evaded nine junk patrols, keeping low and quiet, going to ground at the first hint of enemy activity. But the fact still nagged Combat K—if the enemy knew they were there, on the planet, alertness would be increased. And the enemy may also now have discovered the SLAM cruiser. The last thing a soldier needed after a bad gig was a compromised ride home.

  Franco, bringing up the rear, caught Keenan’s signal and dropped instantly, silent. He carried the Bausch & Harris, now, in his big pugilist’s paws. He was twitchy; on edge. A man on a high wire. A hairline trigger.