Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  "Franco, you got divorced only a few days ago!"

  "Aye?" He looked confused. "And?"

  Keenan sighed. "Listen. We've a lot to do before DropTime. I want you on the ball, kit sorted, ready to move. I've got a meeting with Steinhauer - he's requested, shall we say, a special chat."

  "So you want me polishing my boots?"

  "And your guns."

  "But Keenan!"

  "What do you mean, 'But Keenan'?" Keenan's voice held toxic daggers.

  "We're on a Pleasure Cruiser, baby! In my book, that's an open invitation to at least sample the finer pleasures of what our unwitting hosts have decided to place on the platter of pleasure." He beamed.

  "No."

  "But Keenan?"

  "Confined to quarters. And, just to make sure you stay there, Cam is going to keep an eye on your ass."

  Cam buzzed into view, his battered black shell scratched and dented. Small, about the size of a tennis ball, Cam was Keenan's personal Security PopBot. In reality, he had proved himself a lot more efficient and intuitive than his original directive implied.

  "Oh no," said Franco, lifting his hands before him. "Not you!"

  "Yes. Me." Cam sounded smug. "If he tries to leave, Keenan, do I have permission to sting him?"

  "Definitely," growled Keenan, and stalked off down the corridor, a modern-day Grendel in a steel-ship cavern.

  Franco and Cam glared at one another in the corridor. Well, Franco glared at Cam. Cam simply spun, displaying tiny, glittering yellow lights. Yellow was smug in PopBot displaymatics. That much Franco knew.

  Franco ran for the door opening. There was a brief struggle as Franco tried to squeeze through the portal and close it before Cam entered, but the PopBot's strength belied his tiny alloy size, and the door slammed shut, nearly trapping Franco's fingers.

  "You little shit!"

  "You ginger moron!"

  "Alloy testicle."

  "Bearded idiot."

  Franco glared at the PopBot. He pointed with a stubby finger. "Listen, Keenan might have told you to confine me to quarters, but I'm going for a shit, reet, and I want my damn and bloody privacy. Alreet?"

  "OK, OK. But don't get any ideas, midget. Last time, you punched me to the floor and volleyed me down the corridor. Don't think it's going to be so easy this time! I'm a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450. I have integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and Put Down[tm] War Technology. Nowadays, I don't get punched that easy, baby."

  Franco grinned an all-teeth grin, grabbed the nearest alien pornography magazine, and headed for the loo.

  "We'll see," he mumbled irascibly.

  From his emergency belt toolkit, Franco extracted a Size 15 and stared at the four bolts which clamped the TitaniumIII toilet to the floor. He got down on his knees, poked his head around the base of the toilet, then attached the tool. There came four short bzzzts and Franco grinned at the toilet, as if savouring a private joke. With a hefty grunt, he hoisted it to one side where it made a clang.

  "What are you doing in there?" came Cam's nasal whine.

  "I'm taking a dump. Now fuck off."

  "No, no, you're up to something in there, you little ferret."

  "Get back to oogling Gonad Monthly."

  Franco peered down into the sewage corridor beneath the toilet. A thick blue gunk was flowing in a stream of effluence, merrily on its long journey to the Pleasure Cruiser's Fuel-Compact. On a no-waste pro-eco journey, even shit had its uses.

  Will he believe it? thought Franco, eyes gleaming at the prospect of a pint of Guinness and wobbling breasts. Yeah, of course he'll believe it. He's a moron! And, let's be honest, Franco premeditated, it's just a downright unfair and tasty poison dragging a hedonist like me onto a ship like this, then expecting me to sit like a Billy-No-Mates in his quarters whilst every other bugger is out partying and jigging! Jus' not on. Jus' blummin' disgrace. An' everything.

  Franco poked his head into the fast-flowing corridor and screamed, "Aiiie." The noise echoed metallically.

  "Hey!" came Cam's voice from outside the bathroom. "Franco? Franco? What you doing, lad?"

  Franco eased himself to the corner of the bathroom, and crept behind the mercury shower curtain which shimmered liquid silver.

  "Franco! I'm warning you! Naked arse or not, if you don't reply in three seconds then I'm coming in!"

  Franco chuckled to himself.

  The door squeaked open, and Cam spun warily into the chamber. His sensors took in the abused toilet, the flow of effluence in the sewage corridor, and the simple obvious fact that Franco would fit. "I don't believe it," snapped the little PopBot. "The lengths that deviant will go to for a beer and a romp with a prostidroid. The sneaky bastard!"

  Cam lifted on a stream of ions and dropped below the toilet. Sensors scanning, he sped along the corridor, faster than the gushing charge of blue gunk. It was only when another clang reached his sensors, followed by four short bzzzts that he realised he'd been had. Conned. Duped. Bamboozled! Hornswoggled! By a ginger-bearded squaddie of indeterminate sexual hygiene.

  "I don't believe it!" Cam slammed back along the sewage-drain and stopped, bobbing beneath the now replaced toilet. "Franco!" he shouted, voice echoing up and down the shit-chute. "Franco Haggis, you let me out this minute!"

  "Suck it, sea urchin!" shouted Franco. Then he grinned at himself. "There is no charge for awesomeness!" he said. There came the slam of an alloy door, and the receding patter of sandals.

  Cam shot upwards, and bounced from the underside of the TitaniumIII toilet. It was tougher than it looked.

  "Bugger," he said.

  The Titan Pleasure Cruiser Razzle had its fair share of elitist wine bars, upmarket proxer demijoles, fine ZubZub cuisine restaurants, and thousands of high-class sophisticated drinking depots where one could mix with all manner of sophisticates. Franco avoided these like a particularly nasty plague-pit full of toxic corpses, and instead found himself a Lower-Deck bad-joint replete with unwashed blood-sticky floors and heavy drug-smoke haze. The Winchester was a drinker's drinking den, a gambler's gambling pit, not just a pub or a bar, but a joint, baby, a joint.

  Franco strode in, chest puffed out, and peered through the crowds of ne'er-do-wells. If there was a squaddie or remaining citizen on the Titan Pleasure Cruiser Razzle who had something to hide, he hid it here. If there was any form of criminal activity to be found, it was here. Franco breathed in corruption like oxygen, and gave a big sigh of relaxation. "Mamma. Daddy's home." He strode purposefully to the bar, scrambled onto the high stool on the third attempt, and thumped both fists on the smeared and oily bar-top.

  A barmaid approached. She was tall, gangly, with a plethora of tattoos running up and down her arms and her black hair piled atop her head in one of the latest fashions. "What'll it be, cock?" she said.

  Franco blinked. "Did you just call me cock?"

  "Aye, cock."

  "Hey baby, I love this place!"

  "What're you drinking, cock?"

  Franco gave a broad, beaming smile. He eyed the glittering Aladdin's cave behind the bar. He licked his too-long desert-dry lips.

  "Everything," he said.

  It hadn't taken long. But then, these things never did. And it had to be said, without recourse to hyperbole, and with all due consideration to the laws of slander, that Franco was well and truly fucked.

  He sat at a corner table in a low-slung digital bum-stool, folded almost in half and surrounded by a gaggle of dirty, leering, half-caked grotty individuals. Some were reg soldiers out for a good time and to hell with military prison. Some were Ship Dwellers, again out for a good time, and to hell with any sort of prison. All were listening, enthralled, as Franco regaled them with one of his drunken tales.

  "Yeah, guys, and gals, sorry, s'not meaning to be sexist, after all, I like women, I do, I'm the Party Boy after all..." he took a long experimental drink from his fizzing pink lager, "but whem..." his
voice dropped to a hushed whisper, and the group shuffled in a little closer, "whem you've been in a top-secret hush-hush clandestine Combat-K squad for as long as I have," he tapped his nose conspiratorially, missing on the third stroke, "them they send you on the best of best of top secret mishons. Oh yes. You wait and see what I've got lined up."

  "What have you got lined up, Franco?" asked a young blonde woman, with a disconcertingly innocent face that wasn't lost on Franco. Innocent was good. Innocent was open to Franco abuse. He beamed her a smile, and winked. "'S top secret, love."

  "Aww. Guwon."

  Franco slurped his pink lager, frothing a considerable amount down his shirt. "Right then. Shh! And all that. But me and the guys, and Pippa, she's a gal, we're heading down to Krakken IV, otherwise known as Sick World! We've got a very important mishon to find out whether the junks used to live there. Or not. But it's totally, totally top secret, reet, and nobody is to know outside of this table."

  "Or this room?" said the blonde.

  "Aye, aye, maybe even the whole Winchester. But the point is, they picked me," he puffed out his chest, quite a feat from the confines of the digital bum-stool, "to lead the whole expedition! And if there is dem dirty junks, why, why I'll smash them!" He beamed again, as if he'd just penned a particularly impressive sonnet, or finished composing a symphony.

  "And what of the crown?" whispered the blonde.

  "Crown? What crown?" Franco frowned. "Whaddya mean?"

  "The fabled treasure down there on Sick World. Surely you've heard of it?"

  "Treashure, you say?" Franco's ears perked up. Through an alcoholic smog, tiny little valves started to spark and step.

  "Yeah, Krakken IV is rumoured to have the fabled and immeasurably valuable treasure of Iskander's Crown! Carved from sub-PlutoniumIII, it's supposed to be very dangerous. Loads of treasure-seekers have died trying to locate it."

  "And where would I find such a treashure?" slurred Franco.

  "Oh, they sell maps at the bar, just ask for Apple Annie. She'll smuggle you one. Fifteen Ship Creds."

  "Think I might just do that!" He eyed the group, which had grown to perhaps twenty now, many of whom you wouldn't trust with your newskube, never mind your top secret mission statement.

  The blonde lady leaned forward. She placed both hands on Franco's knees. She stared into his eyes. Franco drooled a bit, an umbilical connecting chin to chest.

  "Listen," she said. "I was wondering if you fancied coming back to my room? If you're feeling a bit energetic? I have some fine... music, we can play, we can dance. That sort of thing." If Franco had looked closely, at this point, through his alcoholic haze, he might have noticed tiny slanted gills on the blonde woman's neck.

  "Hey! Don't mind if I do," beamed Franco.

  "Thing is... well... I'm not human."

  "Tha' OK," beamed Franco.

  "My name's Amil. I'm a Prakku."

  "'S great, love. Which way we going?"

  She stood, took his hand, as her gills hissed in oxygen intake. She smiled, and to Franco, looked quite beautiful, quite the most angelic thing he'd ever witnessed. Which is good, he reasoned, because my last bird was an eight-foot zombie deviant. This had to be an improvement! Reet?

  Franco failed to notice the way she walked. What, with her fish-scaled legs and webbed feet slapping the tiles, Franco also didn't quite notice the smell of fish. After all, the Prakku were an alien aquatic race that spent 85% of their time either beneath the sea, or on a ship like this, in huge saltwater marine tanks.

  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Franco failed to notice the man in the dark corner of The Winchester. A man sporting an eye-patch and long, dark, curled hair. A man who'd been watching Franco all night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DROPSIDE ZERO

  "Where is he?" growled Keenan.

  "Be patient," soothed Pippa. "He'll be here."

  "Well, the little fucker didn't come back last night, nor this morning. And it took me half an hour to free Cam from the blue sludge shit-canal beneath the toilet! The levels rose, soaked the poor little mite in ship-wide effluence. It's played hell with his electrics."

  "Well," said Pippa, "I had noticed his ego getting the better of him. Maybe Franco did the little PopBot a favour?"

  "Yeah, right. You're too forgiving."

  Pippa's eyes were cold, and her humour dissipated. "I'm trying, Keenan. Trying real hard."

  The long queue of Combat-K and regular army squaddies were waiting for their pre-Drop medicals. It was also the time for Combat-K to visit the Upgrades Department - also affectionately referred to as The Splicers.

  Keenan checked his PAD, grinding his teeth. "Well, the bastard better get here soon, or he'll miss his injections. God only knows what he'll catch down on Sick World if he doesn't get inoculated. The place used to be a colony for all manner of alien leprosies, biological experiments and a search for cures to all manner of rare human-alien symbiotic diseases."

  "You read your INFO PACK as well, did you?"

  Keenan nodded, and smiled. "I'm a good boy."

  "We're assured by the DropBot scans it's now OK," said Pippa, as the queue shuffled forward towards an ominous military green door which opened and closed with deep metallic clangs. "After all, all that Sick World stuff was a thousand years ago. Then they withdrew funding, and the research projects were closed down. There's nothing there now, just a planet left to its own devices for ten centuries."

  "No," said Keenan, dropping his voice. "That's not quite what happened."

  Pippa frowned. "You know something I don't?"

  Keenan nodded. "I'll tell you later. In private. Let's just say the history books, once again, are far from accurate. What's that line from th3 m1ss1ng's song? 'Let us celebrate, my friends, with rewritten histories and a fictional past'."

  The queue moved on, and Pippa nodded. "Like that, eh? Well, Franco's gonna be in a world of shit if he misses today. Although I've got to admit, he's had some pretty savage diseases and survived. We used to call him the Viking of VD back on The Bombay Blast."

  "Yeah," growled Keenan. "Well, if he doesn't show, then he's a risk to the mission. I'll give him a bullet myself. Sharp end first."

  Franco moaned. He groaned. He whined. He whinged. He croaked. He coughed. He spat. He pushed himself up on elbows, eyes still sleep-glued shut, then slumped back again because it was just too much damn effort. "Urgh," he said. He ran his tongue over dry lips and wondered who was beating his head with a lump-hammer. Slowly, he realised nobody was beating his head with a lump-hammer, but it was, in fact, a hangover.

  One eye unglued. Fixed on a tangle of auburn hair on the pillow next to him. Then it closed again.

  Girl? he thought.

  What girl? What did I do? And more importantly, what have I caught?

  He peered under the bed covers at his inert and considerably shrunken willy, but could see nothing untoward. But that didn't mean he hadn't contracted some lethal alien cock-virus, did it? Eh?

  He emerged from under the covers like a snail creeping from a stolen shell. He eyed the hair again. The body next to him, curiously angular beneath the covers, shuddered. It made a metallic snoring sound. Something went ticker ticker ticker, almost like... clockwork. The body shuddered again.

  "Um. Hullo?" said Franco.

  The head rotated 180? and stared at him. It was a robot dog.

  "Aiiee!" screamed Franco, leaping backwards from the bed and standing, hands on hips, eyes wide open, staring at the metallic mutt. "What the hell are you doing in my bed? Eh? Eh? You dirty damn bloody mutt! And, more importantly," he stared around, "where is my bed? Where's this? Where am I?" He scratched his bollocks. The dog's brown eyes followed his fingers with a curious feral glittering.

  "Get out!" screamed Franco, and idly, the robot dog, with various clanks and whirrs, clambered from the twisted bedcovers and leapt down to the threadbare greasy carpet. It sat down. Its doggy head, angular, silver, alloy, lifted and regarded Franco with something
akin to wonderment.

  "Ruff," it said.

  "OK, OK, listen up you weird and wacky metal mange-maestro. I don't know what the hell you're doing here, in fact, I have no bloody idea what I'm doing here, but I want to get one thing straight. I'm not into any funny robot-fetish canine doggy business, OK? You're a dog. A robot. Whatever. And I'm a man!" He puffed out his hairy chest. "Got that, dog-meat breath?"

  "Ruff," said the dog, and stood. It whirred over to Franco, legs kicking, and sat down again. A small drawer in the dog's chest slid out on neat hydraulics. There was a slim metal pamphlet. Franco eyed the pamphlet warily, having been the victim of junk mail before. Slowly, reaching forward, he snatched the slim volume and eyed the robot dog with a scowl. He read the front cover:

  Congratulations! on your purchase of the DumbMutt v1.2 special robotic friend. This little special friend will be your friend. A friend for life!! Please find enclosed the instruction manual and ownership deed in a variety of Quad-Gal languages, Braille and scent-sensorship.

  Thank you, Franco Haggis, Quad-Gal resident DNA number 6753675347645-3764575324652. As you read this, a genetic sample has been taken from your fingertips and relayed digitally to the DumbMutt's brain. He is now yours. He will never leave your side. He is forthwith electronically registered to your DNA and as such will follow you to the ends of whatever planet you inhabit [insert here]. If you lose your DumbMutt v1.2 special robotic friend, do not fret, because he will eventually find you. If you vacate the planet, he has emergency funds to book passage on a Shuttle to anywhere within the Quad-Gal bubble. In effect, your DumbMutt special friend will follow you to the ends of the Galaxy. Well done in this, the Smart Choice.

  We do hope you enjoy your DumbMutt v1.2 special robotic friend. He will be a very special robotic friend. For life. Your special friend DumbMutt v1.2 comes with many exciting innovations and technical upgrades over the previous DumbMutt v1.1, which tended to burst into flame and kill the owner. Don't worry! That doesn't happen anymore! Not often, anyway [please read legal addendum].