by Andy Remic
"Pudson?"
"Yes?" Pleading.
"Shut the fuck up. And you damn well stay fucking shut up, if you know what's good for you. Capiche?"
"Yes sir! Thank you sir! I'll do anything sir! Thank you sir!"
"PUDSON!"
"Yessir?"
Franco gestured to Fizzy, who was panting, sweat-streaked, but had the ghost of a smile on her lips. "Fizzy, if this misogynistic misplaced bastard son-of-a-bitch moves..." he smiled. "Blow his fucking head clean off."
Fizzy grinned. "My pleasure, Franco." She grabbed a long, sleek weapon and cocked it, analysing the hypodermic gun's flanks with a military interest. "Although it might take a while."
"Take your time, babe."
Franco moved back to the control panel and glanced down through glass-floor panels. Below, the battle raged. Even at this high altitude they could hear the clash of the medically deformed armies engaging in battle.
"What now?" Olga moved close, and placed her hand experimentally on Franco's arse. He did not complain, so she did not move her fingers.
Franco frowned, brows knitted, and fished out his PAD. It was still dead. As dead as a dodo burger. He shook it vainly, in the hope that some miracle of motion would spark the tiny device back into life. It did not.
"Pippa's down there," he said, softly.
Olga shook her head. "No, she was placed ze thousand kilometres away on a different continent. Remember?"
"Hmm. No. She's down there. I can feel it in my blood. In my bones." He stared hard at Olga. "She's Combat K. I can sense her."
Olga nodded. "If you say so, Big Boy. We should go and have ze look?"
"Yes. Hold on, everyone! We're going down."
Franco dropped the Zeppelin3 through layers of cloud towards the rampaging armies beneath. Huge swathes of nurses battled doctors, dragging their legless and machine-melded torsos through the blood-churned snow, hacking at one another with sharpened stethoscopes and throwing quad-scalpel shurikens with unerring accuracy. Many of the deformed combatants resembled porcupines, with all manner of medical implements protruding from faces and heads and torsos. It made for extremely grim viewing.
"It is horrible," said Olga.
"Savage," agreed Shazza. "Like the BBC Quad-Gal News. What can we do?"
"Very little, I think," said Franco. "These battles have been raging for a thousand years. We are temporary interlopers. Only God knows what these poor bastards are searching for. An end to war, I would suspect?"
"Or an end to medical experimentation," said Fizzy, moving closer to watch the rampaging thousands. An explosion roared, throwing up chunks of ice and bodies. A lower torso with four waggling penises arced past the windshield, and the nurse-clad squaddies exchanged worried glances as the Zeppelin3 rocked on concussions of energy.
"We're too low," said Shazza. "We could detonate."
"I'm looking for Pippa," said Franco, quietly.
"You're insane! What do you hope to see in that?" She pointed with her own weapon, towards the smash and thrash of battle insanity. Nothing was clear. Smoke rolled across the ice. Bullets whizzed and whined. Explosions spat icefall in arcs. Everything was a madness. The world had turned a deep arterial red.
"Take us up higher," said Fizzy, shuddering as a missile fashioned from three oxygen cylinders tied together with straightjackets went wild, howling and spinning through the air, to explode only feet away. Fire roared, heat washing over Zeppelin3's lower flanks.
"No." Franco set his jaw. He turned, suddenly, bent and removed his remaining sandal, and launched it at the crawling, whimpering Paddy who was making a break for the edge of the airship. The sandal cracked the back of Pudson's weirdly-shaped head, and he slapped the floor, unconscious. "Fucking cardboard tough-guy. What a creep! What a creepy sexist bastard!" Franco brushed down his nurse uniform, face in a frown. "It makes one feel quite abused." He turned back to the battle, and banked the Zeppelin to the right. They drifted through smoke.
"There!" he screeched, as he spied Pippa crouching behind an overturned truck. Fire licked along the chassis. Beside her was... Franco groaned. Betezh. But still, it was another set of hands to hold a machine gun!
"Pippa!" he yelled. "Pippa!" But she couldn't hear him over the roar of battle, and the whine and slap of bullets. He turned to Fizzy and Shazza and Olga. "We're going in!" The three women nodded. They could recognise an obsessive lunatic when they saw one; but understood his motivations. Franco was going in... to rescue his friends.
He dropped the airship, and saw Pippa glance up, lifting her weapon. He waved frantically, and saw her face, smeared with dirt and gun-oil, suddenly soften. Shazza tossed a ladder over the side, which unravelled to the ground, and Franco, with Olga holding his ankles, hung over the side with a Sick World machine gun in each fist, covering Pippa and Betezh as they ran for the ladder and clambered up like monkeys on mescaline.
Panting, they dropped to the deck and there came a brief succession of embraces. Another explosion rocked the Zeppelin3, and Fizzy grabbed the controls, lifting them into the air with the roars of a powerful engine.
"Wait!" snapped Franco. "What about Mel? And Miller?"
Pippa glanced at Betezh, then back to Franco. Something in her face made him go cold. "Miller betrayed us," said Pippa, slowly, placing a hand on Franco's arm. "He did one, when we were in a bad situation. We tried to take him down, but he was too quick. He escaped."
"And Mel?"
Pippa's cold grey eyes, usually full of an emotionless calculation, were full of tears and she realised, realised for the first time how incredibly fond of Melanie she had become - zombie or no. Her hand squeezed Franco's flesh, hard. "I'm sorry, Franco," she heard herself say, detached, a million miles away. "Melanie is dead."
Franco closed his eyes. He swooned.
He hit the deck, and remembered no more.
Franco swam in a murky wilderness inside his own head. He stepped from dream to dream, always an observer, unable to interact with his own self as he watched through another person's eyes. He watched himself, the bad decisions of his life, the violent choices he made, the sexual perversions he endured. He watched himself tortured at the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, then watched him eke out a pitiful revenge on Betezh. And finally, he saw himself married to the monster known as Melanie, and their wedding night (he watched, detached, in stunned disbelief; he even appeared to enjoy some of it). And finally, ultimately, came their divorce. Franco sat stiff in a nylon suit, as the lawyers outlined his list of misdemeanours and Mel stood in the witness dock, drooling drool that melted 1,300-year-old hardwood timber, and staring at him with frustration and annoyance. And yes, Franco had to admit, he was not the easiest dude to live with... but when you were divorced by an eight-foot mutation with body-odour problems that would make a skunk weep, you had to start taking a good hard long look at yourself. However, despite the animosity Franco had always nurtured a dream, a small pebble of hope clutched in the sweaty fist of improbability. That one day, Mel would regenerate into her beautiful original self, and come running, falling into his arms, giggling, her fresh hair like flowers in his face, her tongue like honey in his mouth.
Franco grunted. Shit. Life wasn't like that. Bad things happened to good people. The evil weren't always punished. And it was fucking rare there was a happy-ever-after ending. Not in this world, not in this life. Well. Not in Franco's world, anyway.
Franco opened his eyes from beyond his pounding head, and found he was lying on his back, staring at thick hairy legs sporting huge tufts of black spider-hair like coagulated rugs. Franco looked up, weakly. Olga sat beside him, holding his hand.
"Hi," he said. Bum budda bum budda bum budda bum went his headache. But hey. It was better than a sermon from Callaghan.
"There there," Olga said.
"What happened?"
"You found out about ze Melanie." Olga patted his head, as if he was nine years old, which was exactly what he didn't need when the drummer from drumming band Ba
ng Da Drum seemed to be playing a solo in his skull. Franco struggled up onto his elbows, and realised they were moving, or rather, the Zeppelin3 was moving, at speed. He stood, shaking his hand free of Olga's bear-like grip, and padded over to the control section. On a bench to one side was Pudson, head hung low, wearing defeat like a cloak. Franco kicked him on the shin, and he squawked with his nose teeth.
"Hey Pippa? Where we going?"
Pippa turned. Gave a brief smile. "We've had a signal. Must be from Keenan."
"What kind of signal? I thought all comms were down? Are the PADs working, then?"
"Use your head," smiled Pippa.
Bum budda bum budda bum badda bam bam bam went Franco's pounding skull. "What d'ya mean?" he frowned, and looked around, searching for his single sandal which had been used as a weapon against Pudson's deformed head.
"Can't you hear it? Keenan is one crafty motherfucker."
"You mean my headache?" said Franco, eyes wide, realisation dawning.
"Yep," said Pippa. "We three have spinal logic-cubes that detonate if we betray one another. Right?"
"Yee-arse?"
"So? How do they communicate?"
"I see where you're going," said Franco. "Somehow Keenan's tapped into the frequency and is giving us a banging headache with a message. Why, that crafty crafty bastard. I suppose he must be in trouble, then?"
"According to the maps, he's beneath a vast glacier."
"How'd he get there then? I thought he was in the desert?"
Pippa shrugged. "We've all been on the move, Franco. Sick World is far from a normal place. Soil samples? Hah. I hope to God I'm the first one to get my hands on Steinhauer if we ever get off this diseased hardcore rock alive!"
Franco deflated, and moved to the low edges of the Zeppelin3's platform. Below, the landscape sped by icy mountains and frozen lakes. A cold wind whipped Franco's beard, and a hand touched his arm.
"Not now, Olga."
"It's me again," said Pippa, and Franco breathed her scent. He gazed into her cold grey eyes and realised he was in love with Pippa, had always been in love with Pippa, and would love her until the day he died. He knew, however, his love was unreciprocated and a dream to which he must aspire, and ultimately, never achieve. He shrugged. It didn't matter. One day, he might catch her off guard - when she was drunk.
"This game's getting serious," said Franco, morosely.
"Yes," said Pippa. "People are dying."
Franco nodded, and stared out over the snow.
Pippa wrestled with herself. She wasn't used to being nice to people. "I... I'm sorry about Mel, Franco. I know she still meant a lot to you."
"Yeah."
"What do you want to do now?"
Franco shrugged. "Pick up Keenan, I suppose. I feel weird, like a directionless familiar. Like a puppet, with some bastard controlling the strings and making me dance a stupid jig. But hey, I usually feel like that, so some fucking things will never change."
"We need to get off this planet." Pippa leant on the rail, staring the same way as Franco. The cold chill ruffled her bobbed, black hair. "Find Keenan, and get the hell off. They weren't joking when they called it Sick World. A fitting name, on so many different levels."
"It's not that easy," said Franco.
"What do you mean?"
"Well," he took a deep breath, "all those people, all those doctors and nurses, mutated patients, the lot of 'em, they were abandoned here, right? Quad-Gal left them to rot a thousand years ago. Something's happened down here. Something bad. Something which just ain't right. And I want to find out what. To hell with the junks, to hell with QGM. This matters, here and now, to these damn and bloody mutants."
"You want to save the world? Again?"
Franco puffed out his chest. "Well, somebody has to do it."
"This is too big, Franco. Way too big! We should pull out. These deviants, these mutations, they mean nothing to us. Why the fuck should we care?"
"I care," said Franco, staring hard into Pippa's eyes. "And if I can find out who's responsible for Mel's death along the way... well, I'll have me a handy slice of Revenge Pie whilst I'm at it." He grinned, showing his missing tooth. Then sighed. "I was hoping you and Keenan would tag along for the ride."
Pippa grasped his hand, wrist to wrist, in a warrior's grip.
"I thought you'd never ask," she said.
Cam lay breathless (although he had no lungs) and in pain (although he had no pain receptors). He was stunned (although, technically, he could not be stunned) and he was supremely pissed off. This, he could endure, because Cam was a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450. He had integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and Put Down[tm] War Technology. He was, to all intents and purposes, registered as core life. He could feel a close approximation of human emotion, albeit through a deviation of accelerated binary. After the addition of a backstreet bootleg Profanity Chip, Cam could also swear like a trooper and think bad thoughts unbecoming of a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism.
Now, as Cam lay smouldering, blackened, his shell crispier than a crispy fried duck, his circuits shorting and energy draining away towards a digital equivalent of death, anger pumped through him, electronic adrenalin surged his circuits... and Cam got good and proper mad.
He scanned. All around, Cryo Medics were messing about, analysing things, their guns loose, their attitudes relaxed. The threat had passed, moved on, and a little frizzled PopBot obviously offered little or no threat. He wasn't even worth sweeping up!
The bastards, thought Cam. I'll show them, think they can abuse and torture a helpless little PopBot and then not have the decency to finish the damn job properly? Think they can just leave me here bleeding what bit of power I've got from my circuits like a dying fish flapping on the top of a pond? Eh? Well I'll bloody show them!
Cam reached out. He needed power. Lots of power. A nuclear blast of power! Yes, that'd sort out his processor. His chips. Cheap as chips! Ha ha. It'd be funny, if it wasn't so painful. A digital death, so to speak.
However. There were no advanced mechanisms lying around in the foyer of the Silglace. There was nothing of advanced military spec Cam could hijack. No vast power reserves he could tap into. No underground wealth of stored energy from which he could take a humongous Lucozade sip.
"Damn and bloody blast!" said Cam.
Then paused, in embarrassment.
He realised he was beginning to sound like Franco. And that would never do.
Smouldering and fuming, Cam reached outwards to the only power source available to him, and locked. It was simply the fires surrounding him, burning merrily, ignored by the poking Cryo Medics.
Very, very slowly, Cam started to recharge.
He watched the 0.0000000001% edge ever-so-slowly up towards the 0.0000000002% marker. He gave a very big sigh. At this rate, he was going to be stuck for a thousand years... but there was one thing he could do.
Cam focused. He sent a tribal beat of pulses on a back-line cube-whip to Pippa, and Franco.
Combat K, he decided, needed one another.
Keenan, groggy, aware of little more than muffled sounds and hazy vision, felt his arms locked to his sides. Gradually, awareness started to return, but as it did so heavy clanks and metallic thuds filled his senses, introducing panic and fear. Where am I? What's happening? What the fuck hit me in the back of the head?
Then, he remembered. Cryo Medics. With faces like circuit boards. What had he called it? The Electronic Medical Institute for Integrating Human and Machine? Shit. Shit! He had to get out of there... and fast!
His eyes flickered open, and his breath hissed with sharp intake. An inch before his face was what appeared to be a platter of ice. He could see his own breath dusting the surface with steam. He struggled, and found he was locked tight, arms by sides, ankles together, and he felt panic welling inside him because he was essentially mummified, buried, entombed, and a fist plunged into his heart and
held it beating in an iron grip and he choked, could not breathe, and the lack of air, lack of oxygen, lack of life spread out from his heart, first spread out from his inner self and encompassed him, consumed him with the evil of utter and total and universal claustrophobia...
Keenan wanted to scream, but could not take in air.
Suddenly, he felt motion. A jerk, then whatever he lay within began to move. Slowly at first, and he heard a rhythmical thumping sound, a du dum du dum as if he was in a carriage on rails. Then his feet dipped, dropping away, and he tried to scream as he fell vertically, feet to the floor and head spinning and -
Breathe. With me. Be calm.
Keenan felt honey spread through his mind like a gentle narcotic. A warm yellow light infused him. Reality became a distant second-hand experience. As if through drug smoke, Keenan said, Who are you?
I am within you. I am part of you.
Who are you?
I am that element of you which linked to the Dark Flame.
Who are you?
I am Emerald.
The Kahirrim? I thought you died...
We never die. We simply shift phase. Be calm now. Be still now. Relax, and open your eyes, and you will live through this, I swear.
Keenan's eyes flickered open, and still the drug-smoke lethargy infused him. The carriage, or whatever had entombed him, was shifting at colossal speed. Down, then twisting and turning, banking, rolling, and then... it eased to a halt. There came hisses, of releasing pressure, and above Keenan the world shifted. A face loomed over him, little eyes amidst a barrage of electronic boards. Only, now, and this close, Keenan saw they weren't quite right; it was an electronics technology with a difference, each board consisting of tiny, tiny loops and wires, scalpels and needles... as if it was an electronics technology invented by somebody with an utter obsession for medical implements.