Middenface flicked his gaze to Rose. She had risen to her feet and was grasping the bars of her cage, glaring at O'Blarney. "None o' your business." Then he turned to Rose. "Ignore him. He's only tryin' to wind us up."
Rose though, barely seemed to be listening to Middenface. She glared murderously at O'Blarney. "No one insults me in front of my man!"
"No, but really," O'Blarney continued to Middenface, ignoring Rose entirely. "She's no oil painting, is she?"
Middenface growled with anger and strained against his metal bonds. "Hold yer wheesht, yer dirty wee nyaff!"
O'Blarney frowned. "Come off it. You're not telling me you haven't noticed she's about the size of a bus and half as pretty?"
There was a sudden roar of rage from Rose, and a metallic clang as she flung herself against the bars of the cage. Middenface turned to her, to tell her to calm down, that he thought she was wonderful and it really didn't matter what O'Blarney said. But then he saw her face, snarled in rage, all traces of rationality gone, and he knew that it would be pointless.
"Dear me," O'Blarney said. "I seem to have given her the hump."
Johnny couldn't take it any more. As One-Eyed Jack stamped his foot down on his fingers for the third time, he let out a grunt of pain and loosened them from the bars. He felt the wrench in his right shoulder as that arm took all his weight. And now One-Eyed Jack was moving again, raising his foot to stamp it down on Johnny's other hand.
At that moment Enigma raised her hand and slammed it down on the lift controls. There was a deafening shriek of brakes. Sparks flew out and struck the rainbow coloured walls as they rushed past.
The G-forces, which had been pushing them all down, suddenly started pushing them up. One-Eyed Jack, Enigma and all the members of Team X were thrown hard against the roof of the lift.
Johnny was flung against the bottom edge of the lift. His stomach caught on the corner, knocking all the breath out of him, and he flipped over and begun to fly upwards.
The next room Durham Red found was full of statues. They were of beasts, some strange, some that she recognised, all ferocious, fangs bared and claws slashing. Red tried everything she could to work out what was wrong. She tested the floor, she sampled the air, but everything seemed perfectly normal.
It was only when she stepped through the door and the statues sprang to life that she realised what the trap was. But by that time her gun had been knocked from her hand by the first beast, and two more had pinned her to the ground. Their yellow eyes glared into hers. A fourth lowered its jaws towards Red's neck.
O'Blarney's voice could barely be heard above Rose's bestial snarls. She flung herself again and again against the walls of her cage. Each time, the impact was a little quieter, as her rage literally ate away at her. Already, she was thinner than when Middenface had first met her.
And still O'Blarney carried on. "Course, you're nothing to write home about, but even you can do better than that. Or is that the plan, you dirty dog? Get her to keep home for you, and shag something more appealing on the side?"
Rose cried out in fury and her body shuddered and twitched as a fit of anger consumed her.
"Rose, please hen, stop! Fer God's sake, stop!" Middenface screamed, but she was far beyond hearing.
O'Blarney smiled, and carried on.
At the last minute, Johnny grabbed the door of the lift. His body flipped over in a somersault and landed on top of Min Qi Man on the inside of the cage roof. The little mutant above him grunted out in pain. As the lift slowed down, the G-forces were decreasing, but Johnny still felt like he was carrying a ten-tonne weight on his shoulders.
With a huge effort, he tried to push away from the ceiling, to stop himself squashing the life out of Min Qi Man.
Before he could move, One-Eyed Jack fell on him, knife raised to plunge down into Johnny's heart.
Rose was gone. Middenface had seen the moment when the light died in her eyes, and she slumped to the floor, eaten up by her impotent rage. She couldn't have weighed more than twenty kilos by the end.
Middenface knew that tears were pouring down his face, tears of fury and grief, but he was beyond caring. "I'll kill ye! I'll rip out your eyes and spit in the sockets!" he shouted at O'Blarney.
O'Blarney shook his head. "I just don't get it," he said. "I guess love really is blind."
At the last second, Johnny twisted his head to one side. The knife missed him by a millimetre. One-Eyed Jack began to pull his hand back for a second blow, but Johnny grabbed his wrist. As the imposter struggled in his grip, Johnny used his other hand to fumble inside his armour. One-Eyed Jack tried to use his other hand to prise Johnny's fingers free, but Johnny kicked it away with one of his feet.
He could feel the upward pressure decreasing second by second. Soon, the lift would stop completely, and they would all plunge back to the floor. He had a second at best.
And then he found it. His fingers closed on the Electronux hidden inside his jerkin. He slipped it over his fingers, pressed the "on" switch then punched it as hard as he could into One-Eyed Jack's face.
"This is all about love, when you think about it," O'Blarney said thoughtfully. "See, I'm not doing any of this for hate, or revenge, or profit. Everything that's happened here has been for the love of a good woman. Trouble is, it's the wrong woman."
As Johnny plunged the Electronux into One-Eyed Jack's face, the face melted. The flesh shrivelled and burnt and fell away.
It was a mask.
Beneath the mask was the face of Galactic Commission President Hillary the Third.
Johnny had one moment of open-mouthed shock.
Then the lift shuddered to a halt, and four Strontium Dogs and the leader of the free universe plunged to the floor.
19 / THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE
Johnny was ready for the fall. He rolled with it, so by the time he was on his feet his blaster was in his hand and pointed straight at Galactic Commission President Hillary the Third.
She was on her knees, her own gun already half-drawn. When she saw Johnny's finger tighten on his trigger, she dropped her arm, allowing her gun to fall back into its holster. She rose slowly to her feet, arms out to her sides, palms forward. She smiled at Johnny. It was, he thought, a politician's gesture: at once supplicating and commanding, entreating and insinuating.
He studied her in silence for a moment. The fake body of One-Eyed Jack still encased her from the head down, its tattered remains hanging around her neck. Her head, her real head, looked too small in proportion to the rest of her body. Her hair, perfectly coiffed in short auburn curls when he had last seen it on the news-vids, was flattened to her head, greasy and limp. Her face was dripping with sweat. No doubt it had been hot under the mask. Her eyes were scored with tiny crow's-feet, the legacy of more than forty years of life, and there were deep laughter lines around her mouth, where she had smiled at babies once too often. Despite all this, she was still remarkably beautiful.
"Well," Johnny said, "this is certainly an unexpected surprise."
Hillary took a small step towards him. "Young man," she said, in One-Eyed Jack's deep, gruff voice. She frowned, and reached up to remove the small voice-synthesiser still attached to her throat. "Young man," she continued, in a soft, feminine tone. "As your president, I'm ordering you to put down that gun or I'll have you arrested for treason."
Johnny grinned ferally at her. "Yeah, well, as the man holding the gun, I'm ordering you to tell me just what the hell is going on or I'll blow your presidential brains all over this lift shaft."
The other Strontium Dogs had regained their feet. Enigma and Min Qi Man were looking between Johnny and President Hillary in stunned disbelief. Jo sat, leaning against the side of the lift, staring at her fingers. Johnny reckoned she'd had about as much as she could take, and probably more.
Hillary took another small step towards him. "Really..."
Johnny pushed his blaster barrel into the centre of her chest and tightened his finger on the trigger. "You got about t
wo seconds."
O'Blarney smiled as he reached up to the wall and pulled down a gleaming silver implement with a sharp-toothed edge. "Well, mustn't dawdle. Things to do, mutants to eviscerate."
Middenface tore his gaze away from Rose's corpse. Her face was still locked in a bestial snarl. He hated that. It seemed to rob her of dignity even in death. Middenface could feel blood trickling down his arms where he'd pulled against his restraints so hard that the metal bands had cut into his skin. He didn't care. He'd do anything, take any pain, to pay O'Blarney back for what he'd done. He snarled up at the smooth-skinned robot. "I'm no' afraid o' ye, ye evil scunner. Do whatever ye want tae me."
"I will," O'Blarney said. "But don't worry, fear isn't what floats my boat. It's the pain that gets my juices flowing, know what I mean?"
He pulled a lever on the side of the slab to which Middenface was tied, and it tilted smoothly down into a horizontal position. Flat on his back now, Middenface could no longer keep sight of Rose's corpse. All he could do was watch helplessly as the robot pressed a button on the silver implement he was holding. It buzzed and the blades started rotating faster and faster, untill they became nothing but a silvery blur. Slowly, he lowered it towards Middenface's prone body.
"I'll nae tell ye anything!" Middenface told him defiantly, through teeth already gritted against the pain to come.
O'Blarney frowned, two perfect creases forming in his smooth silver forehead. "That's okay, I don't expect you to grass up your mates. This is strictly for fun. Now-" He looked at Middenface thoughtfully, mouth pursed. "I think I'll start with those ugly lumps of yours. Take it from me, you'll be a lot more likely to find some new totty without them."
Middenface felt a cold sweat prickle on his face as the whirring blade descended.
Then, suddenly, O'Blarney swung away. His hand opened and the silver implement clattered to the operating table beside Middenface. It began to slide slowly across it, propelled by its still-whirling blade. O'Blarney ignored it totally, his attention focussed on the bank of screens. Middenface strained, but couldn't make out what had caught O'Blarney's eyes in the panoply of images.
"Sneck! Not now - it's too soon!" O'Blarney said. He rushed out of the room without a backward glance.
Beside Middenface, the silver implement buzzed away, continuing its inexorable journey towards his unprotected face.
"You're making a big mistake," the President said quickly. Her face was flushed red, and she looked considerably less composed with Johnny's blaster digging into her stomach. "I'm not the villain here."
By this time, Johnny had backed her out of the lift and into the mine shaft. The walls around them were glowing with a soft red light. It made his companions' faces look strange, almost demonic. After a few more moments of indecision, Enigma and Min Qi Man had placed themselves either side of Johnny and Hillary, weapons drawn, facing outwards, maintaining a defensive perimeter. Their backs were to the main action, but Johnny was damn sure they were listening in.
"Really?" he said. "How about you explain to me just why the hell I should believe you."
Hillary drew herself up. She looked genuinely affronted. Johnny knew she was from an old-money family, no one had probably ever taken that tone with her in her whole life. "If the word of your President isn't good enough for you, I don't know what is," she said haughtily.
Johnny shook his head. "President or not, your word means nothing to me. See, the thing is, it's like I told you when you were pretending to be someone else. I only trust what I see with my own two eyes. And what I've seen is a person who lies, cheats, and betrays her friends. So, one last time, why exactly are you helping a lowlife like Bad Boy O'Blarney?"
Hillary stared at him a moment. She licked her lips; a quick, nervous gesture. Then she seemed to make a decision. "He's my lover," she said.
Enigma and Min Qi Man snapped their heads round, mouths hanging open in identical expressions of shock.
Johnny stared at her, sure he'd misheard. "He's what?"
Hillary looked round at all of them, staring sincerely into their eyes as only a good politician can. "I love him. Believe me, I didn't ask for this. But the first time I met him, when I pinned that medal on his chest, I looked into his wonderful green eyes and I knew he was the one for me."
Johnny narrowed his eyes, letting alpha rays spill out, deep into her mind. She gave a cry of pain, resisted, but then the barriers tumbled and he was in, swirling in the multi-coloured rush of her thoughts. He looked, searched out for O'Blarney, and there it was, the moment she had met him, the sharp shock, the sped-up heartbeat, the dryness in the back of her throat. Falling in love, for the first time in forty-three years. The shock of it. The incredible euphoria.
Johnny blinked his eyes, and his mind snapped back into him. Hillary gasped in relief as her thoughts became her own again.
"So you started doing the horizontal mambo with the tin man. Still doesn't explain all this." Johnny jerked his chin sideways, as if taking in the mines, the planet, the whole mission.
"It was Chick Delater," Hillary said. Her confession seemed to have returned her confidence. She was almost smiling at Johnny now. "We did everything we could to keep it secret. Balthasar was-"
"Balthasar?" Johnny said.
Hillary nodded impatiently. "O'Blarney. He went into business with Delater, nothing major, just a small smuggling operation. But Delater didn't trust Balthasar. He had him followed. And so he found out about us."
Johnny nodded, beginning to get it. "He's blackmailing you."
Hillary shook her head. "He wants to blackmail us. He doesn't have enough evidence. That's why he wants Balthasar's..." she swallowed, and sudden tears welled in her eyes. "Balthasar's head. With the information stored in there he'd have enough to get me executed ten times over."
Johnny shrugged. "Doesn't seem such a bad idea to me."
"Have you never been in love, Mr Kreelman? Oh yes - I know exactly who you are," she added at Johnny's look. "Have you never cared about someone so much that you don't mind what you have to do to protect them?"
"Maybe," Johnny said. "Difference is, if I screw up, it's just me down the pan. Not the whole galaxy."
"If you care about the galaxy, you ought to want Delater stopped. Or do you really think a man like him should be given the power to blackmail the galactic president? Try to imagine for one minute what he might do with that power." She reached up and put her hand on Johnny's chest. Her eyes were imploring, earnest.
Johnny grabbed the hand and twisted, forcing her down to her knees. "Whatever he'd do with that power couldn't be any worse than what you're doing with it," he said.
Hillary looked around at the mutants, at Min Qi Man, who was gazing at her impassively, and Enigma, who was looking at her incredulously.
A certain light, perhaps hope, seemed to go out of her eyes. Then they widened as something behind Johnny seemed to catch her attention. She smiled and a moment later a bolt of laser fire thundered into Johnny's back and flung him bodily down the mine shaft.
The blades were so close to Middenface's cheek now that he could feel the breeze they made as they spun. A moment later, he felt a light tickling as the first sawed tooth sliced off the whiskers on his face. At least, he thought morbidly, he'd get a good shave before he died.
He closed his eyes, and started praying to a god he didn't really believe in.
A second later, when he realised that the blades still hadn't advanced any further, he opened them again.
Durham Red was standing over him, holding the silver saw in one hand. She found the "off" switch, then threw the thing away from her as the blades buzzed slowly to a stop.
Middenface grinned broadly at her. "Hen, you're a sight for sore eyes and nae mistake."
Red smiled back at him and began working at his restraints, fumbling for the catch that would release each one. Actually she was a sight, full stop. Her face was covered in hundreds of tiny scratches and a couple of what looked like bites. There was another de
ep one on her throat. By the look of it, she'd been lucky it had missed her jugular. She'd definitely been through the wars since he'd last seen her. As Middenface thought that, he remembered exactly why he hadn't seen her for a while, and the smile turned into a snarl. "Ye double-crossing bitch!"
Red stopped her work to stare at him, baffled. "What have I done?"
"Betrayed us tae O'Blarney, that's what! Because of you, my bonny Rose is lyin' there deid!"
The vampire turned to stare at the Blimp's corpse. She shook her head. "I'm sorry she's dead, Middenface, but it was nothing to do with me."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, it is so," Red said impatiently. "If I'm on O'Blarney's side, why exactly am I letting you go?" She returned to his restraints, clicking open the one that bound his chest. As she did, she looked around the room, like a predator sniffing out the territory. Her fingers paused as she spotted something, staring at it intently.
Middenface frowned. He had to admit, she had a point. "Well, mebbe ye're-"
Then, as hastily as she'd been releasing him, Red began snapping the restraints back round him again.
"What the heel are you doin? I thought you was lettin' me go?"
Red shook her head as she left him strapped to the table and walked over to the far wall. "Actually, there's something I need to do first." She held up a razor-sharp medical instrument. "I'm afraid this may hurt quite a lot."
20 / OPERATION
By the time Johnny got to his feet, President Hillary had fled down a side tunnel. Enigma made to follow her.
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