by Andy Remic
Later, Franco would admit he was probably little more effective than a bee buzzing around the TankMek's face, and that the mighty org upgrades of Mrs Strogger did a fair old job in the events that followed. But he'd only admit it after ten pints of Guinness. Maybe twenty. And only then as pillow talk.
A squeal rang across the canyon as, finally, the TankMek yielded. Mrs Strogger twisted its huge head neatly off, showering cables and sparks, and lifted the huge alloy unit up in both hands with a grin, trailing wires and glowing connectors.
"We are victorious!" she cried.
"We're the Smart Party!" yelled Franco triumphantly, and only sheer bloody decency stopped him pounding his chest in an impersonation of Tarzan, such was his euphoria.
They stood, panting, as silence flooded the canyon. All around, dormant war machines stood a silent, useless watch. Franco dropped his improvised club. He was battered and bruised, and blood trickled from a dozen different cuts. He grinned up at Mrs Strogger. "Shit. We won. And all this against one of them!"
Mrs Strogger shrugged, sat with a heavy clank, and wheezed like a failing starting motor. She exuded old engine oil pheromones. She looked, to Franco, suddenly older, more weary, a burned-out hopeless fucking case. But she'd saved him. She'd come back and damn well saved him!
Franco moved over to her, and reaching over, gave her a hug.
Mrs Strogger looked up. "What's that for, bastad?"
"For saving my life."
"You're too good-looking to have your head shot off."
"And you're..." he searched his small repertoire of compliments frantically for a suitable equivalent, "too much of a well-greased engine to give up now. Come on cybe-org, on your feet. I don't know about you, but these damn gangers and their war machine army are starting to get on my tits."
Mrs Strogger stood. She looked at Franco. She smiled. Then her gaze drifted, and her look shifted to something less than normal, to something filled with a mixture of angst and certainty of death.
"Er," she said.
"We sure saw that metal meathead off, eh, girl?" Franco picked up the TankMek leg part and waved it around his head like a monkey. "Let's hope no more bother to show up, or we'll take them apart as well, grind them down into buckets of bolts, eh lass?"
"Er."
"Some pussy got your tongue?"
Mrs Strogger pointed. Franco turned. In almost perfect, well-greased silence, the silence of the perfectly balanced, perfectly oiled machine, the silence of clockwork perfection, the silence of machine equilibrium, three thousand war machines had slowly dragged free their tarpaulins and formed a semi-circle around the two escapees.
Franco looked up into the twisted, anger-filled, psychopathic faces of at least twenty TankMeks, and the smile fell from his chops faster than drool from a SPAW's ill-fitting space jaws.
"Truce?" suggested Franco.
"Kill it," snarled a TankMek.
And then all Hell really did break loose...
Pippa stopped, hand on MPK, and stared. Suddenly, missiles roared and fire blossomed. Machine gun fire slammed. Bullets spat. Lasers cut red, green and blue swathes through fire and dust and exploding metal. Roars rocked the rock. Lights flickered like dying stars. A TankMek shot a hundred feet into the air, trailing fire and a thick plume of oily black smoke, then, describing an arc, was lost in a wall of green billowing flames.
"What is it?"
"Franco," snapped Pippa. She hit her PAD. "Alice. We need you. Fast."
"What's the plan?" snapped Tarly.
Pippa grinned. "Get in and out and the motherfuck away..."
Franco Haggis ran in slow-motion, as if modelling some dodgy rotten hair conditioner. Explosions exploded around him, blossoms of purple, green and red fire encouraging him to run with both hands over his head. Occasionally, his stolen heavy-duty minigun, ammunition belts tossed carelessly across both shoulders, requisitioned from a TankMek Mrs Strogger had thoughtfully cut in two, howled and jabbered like a wild jabberwocky, spitting and snarling, fire erupting, bullets cutting lines of hot metal death into the ranged ranks of the war machines. All around lay death and metal destruction, mayhem and insanity. Franco Haggis tiptoed and scampered through a raging forest of war, dodging one way, ballerina-skipping another, his face and body bathed in fire and bruises and wondering, just wondering how the fucking fuck he was still alive.
Mrs Strogger pounded behind him, hydraulics hissing, face contorted in rage at these machines of the gangers which she saw as a direct mockery of her own race. Those gangers! she raged, slicing through another torso with her arm-knife, flinching at the explosion from its battery pack. They think to mock me! To mock us! To mock my entire race! They have devised a group of inferior machines whose very existence cackles at our regal lineage! Well, I will show them, I will tear apart their inferior machinery and show that only a true org, a true blend of human and machine, can reach the pinnacle arc of an evolutionary machine age!
Mrs Strogger blasted several more TankMeks from existence using their own advanced weaponry which she had, within a few short seconds, bone-welded to her org chassis. Mrs Strogger was not just a war machine, she was a war machine with the ability to fast-upgrade during battle.
Franco ran a merry dance, sometimes behind the psychopathic aged org, sometimes before her, and sometimes cowering beneath her legs as all hell raged above him. The Symmetrical Canyon was being gradually blasted into a mad smush of powdered rock, rock globules and liquid magma. Lava flowed from every direction, as the ganger AI war machines endeavoured to liquefy Mrs Strogger and pulp Franco Haggis into pastrami, as per instructions. However, it would seem the ganger war machines were having a bad day.
"Infantry," growled Mrs Strogger.
"Oh, yeah?" snarled Franco, popping up from between her legs like some rabid, bruise-covered, blood- and saliva-smeared last-minute self-ejected caesarean. He turned his head left and right, and lifted his battle-scarred minigun. "Where are they? Let me at 'em! At last, an enemy on my own level..."
And from out of the smoke emerged Pippa, uniform neat, gloved hands clasping her MPK without a tremble, eyes cold. "I see you, Franco Haggis," she said, voice level, eyes looking past him. She squeezed off a burst, removing the head from an attacking AI. "You little maggot."
"Pippa! Lass! Glad you could, ahem, finally join the party!"
And explosion rocked the ground, making all of them stumble, and from high above came the whine of engines. Smoke billowed and fire roared. Tarly appeared at Pippa's shoulder.
"Is this him?"
"Aye. This is him."
"I thought he'd be... taller."
Franco strode close, one flip-flop missing. "Hey! Lay off the wisecracks. Have you any air transport?"
"Ten seconds," said Pippa, and sighed. She gestured to Strogger, who was wrestling with a smaller Mek. Grabbing it by metal groin and throat, she ripped it in two with a mighty squeal and a small explosion, engulfing herself in a raging inferno from which she emerged unscathed. "She with you?"
"We have... an arrangement."
"Oh aye?" Pippa raised her eyebrows.
"Not like that, dickhead."
"Dickhead? Moi? You were the one who emerged from beneath her legs with your lips all oil-smeared."
"Hey, hey, that's a bloody misrepresentation of the truth, that is..." But the Hornet arrived at that moment, skimming in low and showing several new battle scars along its flanks from Alice's frantic manoeuvres evading the GASGAM gunbots' attacks. The ship's guns started to pound the brawling war machines, Alice's eye for a target unerring, bordering on perfection. Metallika touched down with whines and sighs from the landing gear, and Franco, Pippa and Tarly strode through the smoke to the ramp, followed by a limping, clanking Mrs Strogger. Pippa and Tarly ducked heads, entering the cool, safe interior of the ship. Mrs Strogger, after Franco gave her a nod, shrank from her fighting-war-machine org exterior, reducing into, into, into herself until she was the original human size she'd been when Franco first encou
ntered her in the cells. They trooped inside, leaving Franco standing on the ramp. He scratched his beard, scratched his head, scratched his arse, then lit a cigar and blew smoke at a battered, wounded battlefield.
"Shit," he said. "And all because of one pointless little TV presenter."
Then Alice leapt the Hornet into the air, and they banked, and rose on a fast-whine of engines towards the stars...
It lay in the mud, in a slurry of pulped rock. Molten rock had burnt away its legs, but its mind was fine, its AI mind functioning on full throttle and filled with heat for the sacks of meatpuke who had bettered it. But it had one final weapon. One final swan song. For this was a WormMek. It had been built with a very special function in mind...
It's sleek, pointed, alloy head lifted from the mud and it relayed commands to Nechudnazzar HQ. Confirmation was granted - from right at the top. The AI smiled and considered this act of... suicide. But then, was suicide for a machine the same as suicide for a human? Was there Heaven and Hell? In the great scheme of things, were AIs - created machine life - granted the same concessions after death as their natural, organic counterparts?
Whatever. No matter.
The point was, here and now, he, it, could do something. Make a difference. Make it matter. Make the waste of AI life surrounding its battered, decimated carcass mean something.
The WormMek looked deep into its core and initiated various commands. It agreed various protective subroutines, then watched as code flickered through its processors and the remainder of its body began to meld and blend, panels sliding into panels, ruined legs twisting together into a corkscrew formation with sizeable exhaust ports. It lowered its head, which merged with its shoulders and chest, and all became a dull slick whole as the WormMek changed itself into a Rapid Offensive Intelligent Missile...
Under the mud, jets fired. Powerful jets. Two-thirds of the body was fuel.
The other third?
HighQ explosive. Able to take down something big...
Franco swaggered into the cockpit, smoking his cigar; the ceiling extractors clicked into life. Pippa and Tarly, in the pilot seats, turned slowly to meet his gaze. Franco looked around, but Mrs Strogger wasn't present.
"She powdering her nose?"
"She's having an oil bath. Alice is prepared for all eventualities. Unlike you." Pippa's voice was curt to the point of rudeness, which was no great shock.
Franco slumped in a chair, and lifting his head, said, "Alice, a bowl of CubeSausage and horseradish, if you don't mind. Gods, that was a painful mission. I thought I was only getting data! And then the data became painful data and the data was just too much data."
"What you talking about, Squid Brain?" snapped Pippa.
"Squid? Brain? Me?" Franco grinned, and took the bowl - of what appeared to be lumps of gristle in a mucus sauce - from the slot. He tucked in. With gusto. Through mouthfuls of garbage, he said, "And a pint of whiskey."
"Yes, you, you fuckwit. You fucked up bad, Franco. You were sent in on a simple mission to find out where the Soul of the Junks was. And you couldn't even do that. What a gimp."
Franco ate for a while, his face and body a camouflage pattern of bruises, cuts, smoke-stains and general dirt. His pint of whiskey was dutifully delivered by Alice, and with a sigh Franco drained half the glass in one. His eyes crossed for a moment, then an even more contented look crossed his battered face. "That's good," he said. "That's real good."
Pippa snorted, and turned away in disgust.
Tarly, however, stared at Franco, brushing her long red curls aside. "Something happened, didn't it?"
"Ach, leave the pointless little worm to it," snarled Pippa. "He's always doing this. You send him on a simple fucking mission and he gets hopelessly pissed, shags a few robowhores, then comes crawling back without whatever it was you sent him to find in the first place. Franco Haggis put the I into idiot; he put the less into pointlessness. And he put the cunt into cunt."
Franco raised his eyebrows. "That doesn't work," he said, smiling, all amiable-like.
"It does if I say it does," snarled Pippa. Then she focused her fury on Franco, direct. "You!" She pointed. "You had a simple job. You knew what it was. But you had to get drunk, you had to try and play hide the sausage with every fucking female alien you met. And then, when you're in the shit, we have to haul ourselves down here to rescue your sorry arse. We put our lives on the line for you, Franco, and you know what, mate? Sometimes, you just ain't worth it."
Franco coughed. He held up a fork, bearing a quivering cube of what looked like raw human flesh. "Pippa. Please. Allow me to correct you."
"Correct me?" she snorted. "Which bit? You going to say your sausage isn't the tiny maggot I can attest to? Because, believe me, I've seen it a hundred times and it's nothing special."
"No. No," said Franco, and the smile was still on his face, and it was a smug smile, and Pippa didn't like that smile, she didn't like that smug smile at all, because it was the sort of smug smile that said Franco had been up to something and he knew something important that you didn't. It was always that sort of shit that burned Pippa bad.
"Go on, then."
"Okay, poppet. I was SLAM-dropped. A high dive from a high dive, har-har-har. Well, you know little old me, I like a few beers, and yes, I partook of a fair few beers, but then I says to myself, what better place for the garnering of information than a place where a) people are drunk, and b) important people are drunk? So I hits a few bars, and hits a few drinking dens, and it doesn't take long for wily old Franco to sniff out the important civil servants of Nechudnazzar. I mean, that's where all these doobies go - to the drinking pits."
"Civil servants?" Pippa gave a sniff. "Why civil servants?"
Franco grinned. "Because civil servants are the kind of pen-pushing money-grabbing work-shy council-scrubbing social-fucking fuckwits who have lots of insider knowledge, a pointless self-righteousness, they always claim they're stressed on the stress vibe, and after a few beers have very wide-open wide-flapping flapping-open mouths! It's just the way it is." He smiled. Smugly.
"Go on."
"Well, I came across this guy. Proper burned-out useless hopeless fucking case. Knows a friend of a friend who works at the Nechudnazzar Museum, here in Nechudnazzar, funnily enough. I plies him with a few drinks, loosens his tongue, gets him talking about artefacts and suchforth. Told him I was an out-of-town journo doing a story on artefacts with links to the junks. This dude tells me they have a few items knocking about, old swords and shields, the usual junk-history junk littering the place. Anyway, I'm interested, right, and he warbles on, and drinks more and more, and I drink along with him because, like, that's what you have to do in these situations, when reeling out information like bowel-spaghetti. Then he tells me about the Pod Vaults."
"What's a Pod Vault?" said Pippa.
Franco took another swig of whiskey, and slapped his chops. "Ach, that's a fine Mush Blend. Well. As I was saying. Cloneworld, or Clone Terra to be precise, has a series of Pod Vaults scattered about the land. They're places for either rarities, such as rare paintings by old winos, or fancy bloody sculptures by artists with one ear, that sorta cultural higgledy-piggledy. Stuff that might get nicked, you understand? You still with me, chicken?"
"I think I can keep up," scowled Pippa, glancing at the screens. They'd left the Symmetrical Canyon, and were cruising west across the vast stretch of Pinetop Forest in one of Alice's attempts to avoid the many AI gunbots that roamed the land. "It's not like you're racing ahead like a rocket scientist now, is it?"
"Hey!" Franco winked. "You never know. This whiskey is like bloody rocket fuel! Anyway, another use for these Pod Vaults is for stuff that's dangerous. He said there was a chip, a computer chip - the 3Core."
"What's that got to do with us?"
"It used to run the junks' global mainframe. They used to say it was the heart, mind and soul of their civilisation. Ergo, it must be the Junkala Soul." Franco glanced up at Pippa. "You buying this?"
&
nbsp; "Go on. Let's say you have piqued my interest."
"Anyways, so I gets on with my investigation, if you'd like to call it an investigation, but I was following up leads, reet? And this dude couldn't tell me any more gumf but said there was this woman, called Rebecca, a ganger barmaid who could tell me some more info about which Pod Vault this 3Core was being kept in, 'cos it was reet dangerous to us human types and even more dangerous to those junk types. So I wandered down and had a few more drinks, and yes I admit I had a few glasses of Scrotum's Old Todge Clogger - Finest Single Malt and that to outside and prying eyes I may have looked like I was a drunken heap of shit, but I was actually doing my mission, and getting somewhere, and getting some results, whilst being a drunken heap of shit! Y'see?"
"I see," said Pippa, woodenly.
Tarly leant forward. "You found her?"
"Oh yes," said Franco, with a grin. "I found this Rebecca amidst a hundred other Rebeccas, bloody damn Rebecca-clones all looked the same to me, but I finds her using my intuition, yeah, and I asked my questions like a proper useless drunk, then got shuffled on to this shithole called Van Gok's. There, I met a burned-out GG, really nasty case she was, Gill Pilchards, thought she was God and hated the junks with a vengeance. Resigned herself to being a simple shagbot working the cellars of Van Gok's, and after all she'd done for Quad-Gal Military as well! Proper pissed, she was."
"So you did her?" snapped Pippa, eyes glowing. "You stooped to shagging a burned out GG AI in the name of pursuing your investigation? Ha! You're a whore, Franco Haggis, a cheap slut who lets any hairy hand slide up your skirt."
"Hey! No!" Franco puffed out his chest. "I ref - I const - I den - I just don't bloody like that implication! How dare you! I feel quite" - he shivered - "violated. I am a reformed character. I have fresh moral fibre!"