by Andy Remic
And as the guards leapt from the walkway, falling, screaming to their deaths, and Mrs Strogger rammed through the semi-electronic semi-gothic portcullis, sending steel blades whirling and skittering off into enveloping blackness, so Franco buried his head in her twin circular joysticks and pretended, prayed, and deeply fantasised that he was somewhere else entirely...
It was quiet. A cold wind blew. Franco looked up, shivering, and realised for the first time in what felt like hours that they'd stopped moving. Like a clam releasing its grip on a rock after a storm, Franco unclawed his rigid claws from Mrs Strogger's metal tits.
He looked up. And saw daylight!
"Daylight!" he croaked, like a dying man crawling through a desert in pursuit of water.
"Time to move," said Mrs Strogger, and with bangs and whirrs and cracks, transformed into her former, aged cyborg self, her legs wrapping up and over and around herself, her torso turning inside out, with the mechanical seeming to take very little care of the flesh yolk inside.
Franco felt suddenly very odd.
Franco felt suddenly very sick.
I mean, it's just not natural, reet? I mean, splicing and merging all that flesh together like some kind of human-metal omelette! It's a mish-mash of titanium and pulpy liver and squashed brains and stretched skin, all bolted into steel and plastic and run by tiny machines inside. Urgh.
He shivered, and caught Mrs Strogger staring at him. He coughed. "Okay, okay. I'm moving."
Franco composed himself, and jogged through the tunnel, which grew ever-more rough-hewn and jagged. And, like a triumphant maggot bursting from over-ripe corpse-bloat, Franco emerged into sunlight. It caressed his battered face like a languorous lover with an oiled feather. Franco basked in this unexpected glory, breathing deeply, just damn and glad to be out of the Nechudnazzar Prison complex. "I love the smell of sunshine in the morning," he breathed, huskily. "It smells like... freedom!"
"We're not free yet," scowled Mrs Strogger.
Franco frowned at her. "Just stop. Stop with your pedantic negativity. You've done nothing but bloody moan since I met you. And I, my dear, am a man of" -- he puffed out his chest - "principles."
"Look." Strogger gestured through an alloy crack to the vast canyon beyond.
They stood in a tiny gulley, shielded from view by natural stone clefts. Shifting to the right, Franco got his first view, his first full view of the Symmetrical Canyon.
The first thing he noticed was its sheer size, its vast scale, like some alien god had swept down and scooped free a long narrow defile with a starship-sized spade. It was big. It was the sort of canyon that made other canyons run home to their mummy canyons.
The second thing Franco noticed was that the Symmetrical Canyon was filled with war machines. From flank to gill, from arse to tit, wall to wall bristled with metal upon metal upon crammed metal. Tanks and tracks, trucks and infantry transport, mounted guns and choppers, a hundred thousand vehicles squeezed like squashed sardines in a bulging tin, filling the canyon for as far as the eye could see - and all eerily silent.
"That's a lot of metal," said Franco, eyes wide shut.
"A lot of killing power," nodded the old org, her own orbs narrowed, her face twisted into an expression Franco could not at first read. Then he understood; this hardware was destined to be used against the orgs. This was part of their eternal, ongoing war. This new, crisp, tarpaulin-covered fresh-greased designer killware was created with one purpose: to remove all orgs from the face of Cloneworld.
The machines gleamed.
Mrs Strogger stared, face curled in metal hatred.
"Let's go," said Franco, eventually, uneasily, and started forward. Mrs Strogger stopped him.
"We should be quiet. There will be guards. Lots of guards."
"Great!"
"And, er, other things..."
Franco nodded and, grasping his Steyr laser cannon, and cursing the heat of the sun and his lack of not just armour, but clothing, he led the way through the sand-rimed rocks, out into the utter silence of the Symmetrical Canyon, out into the silent, still battlefield of waiting metal death.
"Okay," said Alice. "I've got locks on three hundred AI AA GASGAM gunbots in the immediate vicinity. They don't seem to move about, do they? They are, on the whole, stationary."
Tarly Winters leaned forward over the console, then sat back. She glanced at Pippa, who did not meet her gaze, but stared forward, face set in iron. A rigid mask. "They sit like a lizard on a stone, absorbing energy, waiting - ready to pounce. Believe me, Alice, I've seen these bastards in action. When there's a threat, a hive call goes out and all others within charging distance come in as back up. It's a terrifying proposition. They are very, very dangerous."
"And that makes me feel better how, exactly?" Alice's voice was sweet, for a ship's computer, but carried a sliver of implied menace.
"What sets us apart," said Tarly, "is that QGM put these machines in place to stop the orgs and gangers fighting; to try and bring a bit of sanity to the dinner table of the insane. To halt the escalation of their war! Now, they have pitched battles, and some small naval skirmishes, but it stopped their millions of cowardly air attacks on one another's civilian targets. Spared a lot of lives."
"How humanitarian of them," said Pippa, voice low, tone neutral.
"The point is," said Tarly, reclining like a cat, hands behind her head, her shower of red curls crawling down her back like live biowire, "they were designed to take on enemy aircraft - all forms of aircraft, certainly, but they don't expect something like a Hornet to come crashing through the party. Yes, they are capable of taking us out - but they're looking for their enemy below. With a certain amount of stealth, we should be able to sneak through."
"I love your certainty," smiled Pippa, grimly. "Remember, Franco's life depends on this."
"As does finding the Soul of the Junks. This mission is about more than one man, Pippa, and you're best remembering it. After all," their eyes met, "you're as expendable as every other motherfucker in QGM."
"Cheers," muttered Pippa, and slid her seat forward.
Beneath, Cloneworld was getting bigger. Alice was bringing the Fast Attack Hornet in high and fast, but slowing even as Pippa watched. The plan was simple - a near vertical drop, pretty much to ground level, with burners rammed up to full in an attempt to imitate a small meteor strike. Alice had estimated the safest LZ was over the Northern Ice Fields at the northern pole. Not a place the orgs and gangers traditionally fought, due to extremes of temperature and a predilection for most war machines to freeze.
As the clouds parted, and the world rearranged itself into a dizzying vista, the engines screamed and howled and the Hornet, normally something sleek and beautiful, was pushed to its limit and began to vibrate with alarming violence.
The nose dipped, and Alice aligned the ship.
"Diving in three, two, one..." and Metallika bucked, jets howled and they roared towards the icy surface of Cloneworld's northern ice shelf.
Pippa, strapped in tight, gritted her teeth and gripped the restraints with white knuckles. She glanced across at Tarly, and was annoyed to see the pretty general casually reclining, eyes closed, face serene as if listening to a particularly fine piece of music.
Alice accelerated the ship. Pippa felt her stomach try and crawl out through her open, panting mouth. Engines hissed and ticked, and motors whined as they stabilised the interior. Ahead, Cloneworld was thrown at the ship like a hardball, and green-and-blue flickered through to white as clouds rushed and heaved at them and Alice, with digital precision, levelled them out and neatly applied the brakes.
They hung, immobile, engines hissing with matrix gas, and Pippa released a long slow breath. Yes, she was one of the most skilled pilots in Quad-Gal Military; but no human could pull off a stunt like that. She took control from Alice, and lowered the Hornet to the hard-packed ice.
"What are you doing?" said Tarly, glancing at her.
Pippa rolled her neck, easing tension. "Get
ting a breath of fresh air."
She moved to the door, hit the ramp button and was blinded for a moment. She stepped out onto the unfolding alloy and walked down the ramp, boots thumping. A biting cold wind nipped at her and, shielding her eyes, Pippa gazed left, then right, across an endless, rippling landscape of ice and powdered snow. Against the glow of an early morning sun, she saw distant mountains, huge towering peaks edging the skyline in black. They're The Teeth, she thought sombrely, and knew, deep down in her heart, that they would one day provide her with a terrible challenge. She could sense it. Sense a strange, evil presence there.
"Alice?"
"Yes, Pippa?"
"Have you scanned that horrible, ugly mountain range for activity?"
"Of course. There is no life."
"What, nothing at all?"
"Nothing at all. It's as dead as a dead dog."
"Curious."
"Why so?" asked Alice, voice inflection changing a little.
"You'd expect... something. Plant life, snow leopards, hulking yetis, that sort of thing. Something."
"Not necessarily. What's on your mind, Pippa?"
"I've just got a bad feeling. Like it's a really good place for an ambush. But it doesn't matter, does it? Because we're not going there."
"Correct," said Alice.
Pippa gave a shiver. "But I've got a real bad feeling about The Teeth."
Tarly stepped out behind her, boots clacking on the iced ramp. "You okay?"
"I'm just appreciating some real air for a change. No offence to Alice, but after a while stuck in that damn ship, well, the bloody recyc is like breathing noxious toilet fumes."
"I heard that," came Alice's dulcet tones.
Smiling, Pippa moved down the ramp and stepped onto Cloneworld. She dropped to one knee and ran her fingers through the powdery snow. It's real. A real world. Soft and cold under my fingers. She breathed deeply, and rubbed at her eyes, then stood and composed her face into an iron mask as she shifted to face Tarly.
"Let's go find Franco," she said.
The Fast Attack Hornet cruised down the western flanks of the narrow barrier-continent known as The Teeth. Crossing the sea seemed the safest option, as the AA gunbots were mostly ground-based. Alice scanned continually, giving Pippa and Tarly updates on military movements across both massive continents, Clone Terra and The Org States. It seemed both countries were ramping up military activity, and it seemed likely they were preparing for one of their regular and predictable battles - although Alice did remind them of the fact that Opera had been murdered, and this might be taken as an aggressive military act by The Org States against Clone Terra, thus initiating increased military activity. In response to this, both factions would continually ramp up their own operations, thus creating a self-perpetuating state of escalating high alert and strike probability.
Pippa studied a map on the console screen. Occasionally, she spun it around, zoomed in, switched to vertical fly-by, and committed the landscape of Clone Terra to memory.
"So, he's in the Symmetrical Canyon?" said Pippa.
"Yes," said Alice. "There's a lot of activity down there."
"What kind of activity?"
"Fighting activity."
"Hmm. Any groundbots?"
"I register five. That doesn't mean there's only five. Only that I can see five. Some of them are craftier than a deviant PopBot on MercuryCrack."
"ETA?"
"Ten minutes. I'd say 'tool up,' but that would be both predictable and slightly cringeworthy. I'd certainly suggest getting yourself heavily armed. I think we're going in fighting, and I think we'll be lucky to bring your, ah, companion out in one whole piece."
Pippa smiled, but her humour had gone. Now was not a time for humour. Now was a time for battle.
She pictured Keenan in her mind. She missed him desperately. He had been the glue that bound the Combat K team together; the wire that connected them in place. A unit. Yes, individually they were a bunch of psychopathic nutjobs; but without Keenan at the helm, the world seemed to be crumbling apart. A gradual disintegration. His ability to lead them had been invisible, a background skill, the sort you only ever really missed when it was gone. Well, Keenan was dead, and Franco and Pippa were doing a good job of fucking everything else up by themselves.
Tarly touched her shoulder. "I'm coming in with you."
"No, you're not."
"Yes. I am. Orders." She sighed, smiled resignedly. But her eyes were hard. Like flint.
Pippa's jaw muscles clenched. "It seems... silly to risk one so exalted as yourself, General, on such a lowbrow, arsewide mission. Maybe you should stay here and continue... checking maps, inventing tactics, winning the war for hearts and minds." She waved a mock triumphant fist. "I, on the other hand, am dropping into the real shit."
Tarly shrugged. "I'm coming. End of tale. Accept it, or I'll have Alice confine you to quarters."
Pippa stared at her, then clacked her teeth, spun on her heel, and moved to the doors. They were preparing for a fast SLAM drop, after which Alice would get the Hornet out vertical and fast, and they'd have a window of five minutes to pull Franco before she circled and dropped again, hauling them out on biobilicals. It would be tricky. Dangerous. And all so Franco could get his spot on TV...
"You're risking a lot for somebody who fucked up," said Tarly, moving in behind Pippa at the SLAM door.
"It's Franco. I love him."
"Even though he's a liability?"
"I trust him with my life. I'd kill for him. And I'd die for him." She stared hard at Tarly. "And there ain't many people in this life who get that sort of loyalty from me. You understand that, career-girl-with-a-spotless-fucking-CV?"
Tarly stared hard at Pippa.
"Don't push it, Pippa. My tolerance only stretches so far. And I'm considered a reasonable woman."
"If you don't want fucking answers, don't ask fucking questions!" snarled Pippa. She glanced up. "We at the SLAM zone, Alice?"
"Ten seconds."
The doors opened. Wind buffeted Pippa, and she stepped to the edge and looked down on a semi-arid landscape. She could smell sea. And salt. Hear the whine and deep throb of engines. The snap of flapping straps from her pack. Her eyes were watering from the stream, and Alice counted, "Three, two..."
Pippa jumped.
Franco crept down the canyon floor, flip-flops kicking up a little dust, nostrils breathing the acrid air, sweat streaming down his face and body, glistening in his beard, making his hands slippery on the Steyr cannon. He stopped. To his left and right were solid walls of huge rugged machines, towering up and over him, the size of massive buildings. They were wreathed in greased covers, gleaming in the weak sunlight. Franco paused, regulating his breathing, mouth dry, wondering when the shit would ever end. And that was the thing: the shit never ended. And this time, as usual, he was in it right up to his neck. Hot damn. Up to his cranium tip top!
Franco glanced behind him, and Mrs Strogger eased towards him with a curious sideways shuffling gait. Her hydraulics hissed softly, but she was doing well. At least she wasn't making the usual loud whirring and clanging sounds.
Franco moved on. Past rows and rows of dormant war machines, of tanks and choppers, of mechs and MMAs - Mobile Missile Arms -- with flanks of matt green and black DPC. Franco gave a shudder. So much metal. So much potential destruction. In some ways, seeing them dormant like this was worse than seeing them in action; in action, they were imperfect, and often destroyed. Here, there was just a latent potential for mutilation. For death.
Getting soft, you old goat, he thought. Time for a wife and kids, a mortgage and a big fucking TV. Ha. Ha.
The laughter sounded false in his mind. After all, Franco was here in enemy territory, surrounded by those who wanted to kill him. Pulp him. He was wearing only underpants and a slim sliver of rubber under each foot. He'd lost all military comms, and his only friend was a cyborg. An old cyborg. An old, insane cyborg who might flip at any moment and take him out as well.
Franco rubbed his eyes, and groaned inwardly.
Why me? he thought.
They stopped at an intersection. A wall of machines met his gaze. They were a kind of cross between mechs - huge, two-legged, vaguely humanistic war robots - and tanks. The two-legged metal monstrosities had tank turrets on their backs, and triple-wheel treads instead of feet. They reared up above Franco, thirty feet tall and utterly terrifying.
"They're TankMeks," said Mrs Strogger.
"Well, I'm glad those bastards are asleep," said Franco, in a muted half-mutter. "They'd soon turn little Franco into fish paste!"
Suddenly, behind him, Mrs Strogger - who had sidled to a halt - gave the most incredible high-pitched squeal, a reverberating metal moan that sang out like a siren, an alarm, and after reaching the highest reaches of the atmosphere, warbled back down until it was a dull baritone. She twisted, jerked, twitched, seemed to have an epileptic fit, or the cyborg equivalent. Her limbs jerked and twitched spasmodically, and her minigun emerged and fired erratic shots into the ranks of the TankMeks. Bullets whizzed and whined and pinged, and Franco hit the ground in a puff of dust and covered his head with his hands, one beady eye fixed on Mrs Strogger, half a mind urging him to take her out with his laser cannon... only, well, only he'd seen what she could do, and was pretty damn sure it'd take more than a burst of cannon fire to render her dog meat. It'd take something like, well, something like a TankMek.
The bullets stopped. The minigun whirred to a halt.
Silence deafened the canyon.
Slowly, Franco got to his feet and scowled at Mrs Strogger. But her eyes were closed and she was perfectly immobile. She seemed to have passed out, standing where she stood, kept erect by her org mechanicals.
"Dumb bloody machine," muttered Franco. He turned and stared at the huge TankMeks. Nothing had happened: no guards had come rushing, no lights flickered, no guns boomed. "Seems like everybody's got the day off! Things are looking better and better by the very second... Hot damn..."
Franco grasped his laser cannon with a rattle. He took a deep breath. Which way to go? And was Strogger dead? But on the up side, maybe Strogger was dead? He'd be free of her unpredictability...