By Other Means Read online

  “Do it!” he demanded. The threat of bleeding out from the Combat drug seemed meaningless.

  The initial sensation of the transdermal spray hitting the base of Owens’ neck was lost to him. Then the drug reached his brain, and the pain faded away. It felt like cool water was running through his vein, as the drugs’ synthetic hormones and endorphins dominated his body. His eyes dilated in response, and his mind finally cleared.

  “Ne se deplacent pas!” someone yelled in French.

  Owens could feel his heart pounding in his chest, as his reality shifted into slow motion. He looked up; standing there just on the other side of the surface root was a Legionnaire. A bullpup assault rifle pointed at Owens, the mercenary’s hand gripping the weapon’s underslung 30mm grenade launcher.

  “Don’t move!” the gunman restated in English.

  Something was moving fast at the edge of Owens’ display. Like some mystical creature of the forest, it seemed to fly through the air toward the enemy. It was Ra’Ewl’s icon. With a thud, the scout connected high on the mercenary’s back, knocking him forward over the root, toward Owens.

  Startled, the mercenary pushed out his left arm in an effort to break his fall; the assault rifle still held by its pistol grip in the other.

  Owen reared up to meet him; making a desperate grab for control of his opponent’s weapon, he did manage to shove it aside as the gunman landed on top of him. Now as the tide of battle shifted, Owens wrapped his left arm around the mercenary’s neck and grabbed for the back of his equipment harness, pinning his face down onto Owens’ chest.

  Panicking, the mercenary fought to bring his legs up under him in the hopes of pushing free.

  Owens held tight as he threw his own leg across the captive’s. He then grabbed for his knife, and with a snap, pulled it free from its sheath. With a hard thrust, the thick blade’s reinforced chiseled tip punched through the mercenary’s mesh armor, and sank deep into the side of his throat; his whole body jerked as the edge struck home.

  Like a vise, the mercenary lock his hand onto Owens’ knife-wielding arm; desperately he pulled at his tormentor. Owens knew it was just a matter of time; he could feel his captive’s strength failing, as fingers lost hold and went limp. With a twist, he pulled the knife free to an accompanying gush of arterial spray. A sensation of warmth was conveyed across his gloves’ tactile contact pads; blood continued to pump from the opening.

  “Tae the Devil with ya!” yelled Owens as he pushed the still twitching body of the mercenary aside; it rolled over and landed with a thump onto its back, bending its right arm at an unnatural angle and trapping the assault rifle underneath.

  Owens turned to look for his own weapon; it lay just a few feet away tethered to him by its strap. Planting his knife in the ground, he reached out, his fingers closed around its roll-bar hand guard. He pulled the rifle into his arms and made it ready.

  “Owens?” said a familiar voice. Standing on the chest of the fallen mercenary was Ra’Ewl, his head darting about as he attempted to take stock of the situation.

  Owens took a deep breath, something wasn’t right. “Yeah, I’m with you.”

  Ra’Ewl lowered himself down onto his belly, seemingly to get a better look. “Your left thigh is a mess. Can you walk?”

  Owens knew the answer. He placed his gauss rifle on the ground, and then patted his chest. “Come here.”

  Ra’Ewl paused for just a moment, then stood up, walked over, and settled down onto Owens, who was now reaching into his side pack. Owens placed his hand on the Parr’s backpack, where he then flipped up a small metal loop and held it in place. In his other hand was the connector end for the emergency carry strap, which if need be, he could us to sling a Parr like a piece of equipment; it snapped as he hooked it in to the ring.

  “Get her to the recover site.”

  Ra’Ewl stood up and climbed carefully up toward Owens face. There he stood for just a moment, as if he could see in through the helmet’s frontal armor. “Roger,” he replied, then turned and headed off.

  Owens sat with his back against the tree, his gauss rifle across his lap. The damage to his thigh was horrendous, but he did what he could. He’d used up the medpack’s coagulant spray in an effort to slow down the blood loss and now only a pressure bandage kept him from bleeding out. Tingles ran down from his neck as the suit administered drugs to help keep him stable.

  “We’ll be on the ground in less than fifteen,” stated the unseen voice. “Just hang in there.”

  “Roger that.” Owens closed his eyes; the suit had lowered its internal temperature to an uncomfortable level in order buy its user a little more time. He could feel his hot breath blowing around past his cheeks. There was a glow beyond his eyelids, something was flickering.

  He struggled to open his eyes as he turned his head; arm muscles twitched in an effort to raise his weapon from his lap, but to no avail. About ten yards away was a moving pool of white light; through his scopes it blazed like a searchlight. Owens smiled. Ra’Ewl had turned on his helmet lamps, and with Crissy in tow holding tight onto his carry handle, he was guiding her thought the darkness. She stamped along behind him in her oversized boots, while holding her blue pushy rabbit high up under her left arm.

  “I know how you feel,” joked Owens, remembering the contact bandage that Ra’Ewl had put across the rabbit’s soft belly.

  Ke’Se was just behind them; he stopped and looked in Owens direction. An unspoken sense of kinship seemed to pass between them. Owens raised his hand and motioned for Ke’Se to keep moving. At a trot Ke’Se caught up with the others.

  Once they had gone, he was alone in the dark; the sounds of comm traffic from the approaching ADF tilt-rotor aircraft played in the background. His mind started to wander; it had found its way back the Crissy’s house, and the sight of her eyes wide with terror. Owens then looked over at the dead Legionnaire, then thought of the other two he’d taken out, and nodded with satisfaction. “Now there are three less wolves.”

  SPLINTER

  A SPIRAL Universe Story

  Andy Remic

  The secret organisation known as SPIRAL exists to fight a shadow war against fanatics and rogue states of every faith and political persuasion. Remorseless, unstoppable, of every country and of none, SPIRAL’s agents conduct their covert operations throughout the world in a never-ending battle for civilisation’s survival.

  SPIRAL MAINFRAME

  COM.MEM 636843ei75#

  CLASSIFIED - SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

  NEX - The Nex Project, Nx5. Nicknamed ‘Necros’ or ‘Nex’, the Nx5 Project was pioneered in the 1950s. The Design Brief was simple—create a blend of insect and human capable of withstanding chemical, biological, and nuclear toxins. Using primitive yet advanced technology originally discovered by the Nazis, Blending allowed genetic strands to be spiralled together—woven into a wholly new and enhanced creature. When the human skein was kept dominant, the resulting hybrid had many powerful characteristics of an insect—much increased strength, agility, and speed, an increased pain threshold and a resistance to chemical, biological, and radioactive poisons with enhanced immune systems. Nex also had increased throughput thought-process, and some grew external and internal armour to protect organs and bones. All Nex became lethal killing machines without remorse. The perfect soldier with an ability for enhanced genetic repair. However. A major negative was change to the subject’s mind-state, with most Nex losing all emotion, the ability to love, to nurture, to care. The mind became like that of an insect—sterile, non-empathic, completely focused on given tasks. Once leaked to government departments, Spiral withdrew funding following negative media coverage, several laboratory explosions, and growing concerns over deep-rooted moral implications.

  NEW YORK CITY

  3.18AM

  Carter sat alone on the underground car speeding beneath the towering steel behemoth of New York City. He wore crumpled clothes, his brown hair cropped short, his face rugged and battered with a week�
�s growth of beard. Carter was Spiral, one of its most trusted, most dangerous, and most feared operatives. Even more—he was Demol57. Part of a tactical DemolSquad. Demolitions. He destroyed things. Destroyed buildings. Destroyed rogue weapons. Hell. He destroyed people.

  Carter’s dark eyes stared straight ahead, watching his own reflection in the glass opposite. Outside, the Metrov3.0 hissed and rushed at 350mph. This modified and advanced underground transport system was a jewel in the crown of NYC’s new modern image; its new technological superiority. Carter grunted, lit himself a thin, evil-smelling cigarette, and drew deeply on the weed.

  “That’ll kill you, old man,” Kade growled in the back of Carter’s mind, and Carter gave a sour grin that had nothing to do with humour. Kade, the thief, the mental adulterer, had snuck in the back door of Carter’s psyche like the back- stabbing bad friend he’d always been. Carter exhaled a stream of cancer smoke.

  “Better believe it,” he muttered. “But at least...when I die, you die with me.”

  “Better make sure that never happens, fucker,” Kade said, voice like a rattle of fleshless knuckle-bones tossed carelessly on a board of lead. “Better make sure I’m always here to make the difference...brother.”

  Carter did not reply. Did not encourage his dark demon, his necrotic angel, his brother of the soul. Kade was there, in his mind, hovering like some featherless albino bird of prey waiting to strike...and Carter despised him—yet at the same time needed him. Because Kade did things Carter would not, or could not do. Kade got the job done; no matter what the consequence.

  The whole of the Metrov3.0 hummed like a live thing, a vast network of dark energy and high-speed traffic, with coils of gestalt human serpent coiling through its innards like a bad case of worms. Usually. But not now; not on this night. It was as if some sixth sense had taken over the revellers, the drugsacks, the party seekers of NYC; in this darkness, in this moment, Carter was on his own.

  Carter touched his Browning 9mm HiPower at his belt, as much for reassurance as anything else, and finished his cigarette. He dropped the butt, crushed it under his heavy military boot, and glanced up—into a right straight. His head snapped back, but he was already moving, rolling sideways with both feet kicking out as a second blow missed him and drove through the window with a splintering like the keening screech of a tortured ghost. Reinforced glass shards scattered like frozen tears. A rush from the underground tunnels hissed into the car with a hot-oil engine stench as Carter rolled, stood, but his attacker was moving fast, leaping even as Carter recognised it should have been impossible to punch through the car’s window. They were practically bullet-proof.

  She leapt, he caught a glimpse of white skin, a youthful face, pretty and demure and impassive, as another right punch drove straight for his face, and he shifted, rolled, and smashed his own hook to her ribs. She grunted, flexed, and kicked him in the chest. The blow picked Carter up and drove him down the centre of the car. He landed, pain blinding him for a moment, and as his mind cleared she was standing there, looking down at him with an impassive expression.

  Carter blinked. Her eyes were copper.

  She stamped down but Carter, veteran of many an army barrack brawl and expert in the art of hunting down shitbags and exterminating them with extreme prejudice, shifted his body and kicked out, snapping her knee back with a sickening crack. The woman stumbled away and Carter climbed to his feet, Browning out, face grim because this wasn’t how it was supposed to be; he was following her and it looked to all intents and purposes that his cover was smashed to ratshit.

  “Bitch.” He snorted out blood. She’d broken his nose. He hated it when someone broke his nose.

  Carter aimed down the Browning. He narrowed his eyes. “Talk.”

  The young woman smiled, although it was an expression in pastel shades. Carter still couldn’t quite believe it. She was young enough to be the Prom Queen. Young enough to be...his daughter.

  “Don’t go there, Carter. It always gets you in the shit.”

  “Thanks for the warning, granddad.”

  She should be crying now, writhing in agony, her knee folded back the wrong way. But there was no show of pain, or weakness. She was sat, cradling the damaged joint, staring up at Carter like some baby-faced child and he suddenly felt wrong and bad pointing the gun at her. He shifted the weapon, licked his lips. What now? Cover blown? Did she know his mission?

  “You’ll never get to her, Carter. She’s too smart,” the woman said.

  Carter’s jaw muscles tightened, and the Browning moved back to her. This was no High School Darling. She was a trained killer, and he had to treat her as such. “Tell me.” He had to nearly shout the word, for the howl of the tunnels invaded the car like a nest of burning banshees.

  “She’s seen you coming, Carter. Can smell you, like the stench of a corpse pit. And when you find her, she’ll kill you.”

  “Maybe.” Carter drifted closer. The lights in the car were flickering. The rhythm of the tracks pounded his mind. And he could feel Kade crouched at the back of his skull, like a slick, black toad under the lily pad in an oil pool; waiting with wet tongue and wet lips and a panting hard erection, waiting for the kill...

  Because he must kill. He’d been compromised. And nothing ruined Carter’s day more than killing a pretty girl.

  “Where is she?” he said, low voice barely audible above the car’s cacophony.

  “Pyramid Rig,” she said, and there was a light sheen on her skin and her hands were fixed on her broken knee. There was a crack as she forced it back into position, and kicked out suddenly, in a blur, catching Carter’s Browning which sent a BLAM into the floor an inch from her face, then clattered off down the car. Carter stepped back, and she was up, smooth, fast, fluid, and Carter licked his lips because she should not be up, should not be walking, she showed no pain, and there was something incredibly eerie and creepy about this young woman’s whole countenance...

  “Let me kill her,” Kade growled.

  “No.”

  “Go on Carter, let me out to play...”

  “Not today, Kade...”

  Carter backed away. She ran at him, firing a right straight, right hook, left front kick, left straight. Carter blocked the punches, each blow landing like an iron bar across his forearms. He returned two punches, but she twitched, avoiding them easily, and chopped out with the flat of her hand, almost taking his head off at the throat, and instead catching a vertical pole used for travellers to steady their balance and sending it clattering sideways, punched from its sockets. Carter leapt forward, grabbing her, pinning her arms to her sides. She slammed her forehead into his broken nose, and with a gasp Carter staggered back, blood flushing his face. She attacked, and he blocked as if by miracle, feeling bone-crunching blows up and down his arms. Then a blow smashed his face, and a kick sent him spinning to the ground. He lay, panting, drooling snot and blood. He spat out a tooth. He growled, deep and low in his belly, because this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be...

  “Getting battered by a little girl?” Kade mocked, ever the triumphant joker. “Let me out, Carter, and I’ll eat her fucking soul...”

  “No!” he yelled, grabbing the knurled steel pole and rising fast, twisting as the woman leapt, both feet aimed for his face, and the pole swatted her from the air like a bug. She hit the side of the car, cracking another window, and tumbled down between the seats. Carter moved forward and gazed down. She held his Browning.

  Carter went cold and dead inside.

  “Just remember,” she said, her pretty young sweet white face looking up at him with all innocence and purity and naivety from behind the perfectly balanced Browning, and it was wrong he was fighting her, wrong she was the enemy, wrong she was trying to kill him, but it was a fact. And he had to deal with it. He nearly called Kade, then; but stubbornness and his dark angel’s mockery nuked the impulse.

  Carter stared down the barrel of his own gun, and that was never a good place to be.

  “I volun
teered the information, Spiral man. She’s waiting for you. Rebecca is waiting.”

  Carter frowned, then lurched forward as she turned the gun on herself, put the barrel in her mouth and pulled the trigger. The gunshot was muffled. The back of her head exploded across the car’s interior, a shower of skull chunks and brain slop. She sagged, still holding the gun, eyes still fixed on Carter. As if it were his damn fault...

  “Shit.”

  “You handled that well,” observed Kade.

  “Back off, or I’ll shoot myself in the mouth and we’ll see where that leaves you, brother!”

  With an air of wounded indignation, Carter felt Kade leave his mental parlour. Carter felt suddenly free, and light, as if a refreshing breeze had blown through his soul. And he knew, deep down, one day, he would exorcise the demon that was Kade; for only then could he be free of the persistent torture. Only then, could he be sane.

  Carter leant forward and closed the girl’s eyes. He took his gun from her limp, blood-speckled fingers and gave a single shake of his head; as if to say, I don’t get it, as if to say, what the fuck were you thinking; as if to say, I’ve had enough of this game, because I no longer understand the rules and it just gets worse and worse and worse.

  He rocked back on his heels. Took out his ECube, a tiny black alloy cube which unfurled in his hand like a delicate alloy rose, a cryptic Chinese puzzle. “Mongrel, you reading me?”

  “Da vai! Carter, Old Horse, you okay?”

  “I need a pick-up.”

  “Ha! Good man! Did the pizda cause you any problem?”

  Carter stared down at the slack, lifeless corpse; a young, beautiful woman who had taken her own life in the name of God-only-knew what forsaken cause. He grimaced, as if swallowing sour wine. He stood. “No,” he said. “No problem at all. Out.”

  Mongrel brought the fast-attack Manta in slow through the darkness and sleeting rain of Manhattan, and touched down with hydraulic hisses and the soft whine of matrix coils in the yard of an abandoned slaughterhouse. His gloved hand reached out, steadying himself against the twisted metal console of the nav computer. And, with eyes squinting, unshaved face a contortion of concentration, and fear, and yet lined with an inner superior strength which made him the son-of-a-bitch rough and tumble psychopathic good-natured bear-like Spiral-op bastard that he was, Mongrel searched for his old friend and Demol57 buddy, Carter, as he licked at dry lips revealing broken, crooked teeth—victims of too many late night bar brawls, smashed stumps the remainders of beer-induced, knuckle-buckled sandwiches. Mongrel’s face was framed with battle-weariness. A deep and ingrained bitterness. And in this New New York World, fear was never far from his mind…