by Andy Remic
The worst, Emelda, a big butch lass with legs like girders and a spotted face like a burst melon, with facial lumps and frizzy hair like bad candyfloss, Emelda, yeah, Emelda had taken particular delight in torturing Pippa, chasing her on long winter mornings across frosted fields, throwing lit matches at her in class, singing, "Burn the witch, burn the witch, burn the witch!" This went on for years. For long, agonizing years. Years of subtle fear, of checking the coast was clear before leaving school and before joining the dinner queue; always the last to enter the classroom, just after the teacher, much to the amusement and general hilarity of Emelda and her group of mocking cronies. Pippa the Prick, they called her. Pippa takes Prick. Pippa the Witch. Pippa the Bitch, Pippa the Walking Corpse, fucking burnt bitch, you should have died in that fire with your mum and dad, you should be a blackened stick-corpse, stinking like fried pigmeat, lying in a mass grave for the burned, all curled up together like burnt bacon and your fingers like black twisted twigs.
They caught her by the local shops. Ironically, her dad had sent her to buy cigarettes and matches, and she stood, arms limp, matches in one hand, as the girls formed a semi-circle, cutting off her escape, and Emelda, with her frizzy mass of back-combed curly hair, snarled words filled with poison and hatred and Pippa did not understand, did not understand this hate. What had she done? She said it, finally plucked up the courage to say the words which burned in her breast.
"Why, Emelda? What did I do to you? Why do you hate me?"
"You fucking burnt witch, we want you to die, we hate you, hate your stupid little bitch face and stupid little burnt-stick arms and legs."
There was no reason. Something snapped inside Pippa.
She smiled, even as Emelda slapped her a stinging blow across the face, making her skin smart with an imprint of fat, red, crooked fingers, making blood trickle from her split lip, and Pippa's eyes turned triumphant in a cold, analytical, grey glow.
"Burn the witch?" she whispered, understanding flooding her, and she struck the match and threw it into Emelda's frizzy hair in one swift movement. Emelda's hair was a monstrosity of curled hair filled with hairspray. Flammable. Her head went up like an inferno, curls crisping and Emelda screaming like... like a live pig on a spit.
Pippa smiled as Emelda rolled around on the floor, screaming, trying desperately to put out her blazing hair. None of her friends helped. They backed away, like the cowards they were, and faded into the shadows for eternity.
Pippa stood, watching Emelda squirm, head tilted to one side, eyes bright, screams now gone as her lips melted, her skin melted, but the eyes were there, would always be there, watching her, haunting her...
"Check your back," said the clone, her words gentle, her words gentle. "Go on. There are no scars. You were never burned in the fire. It's a memory implant, Pippa. When my genetic code was copied, cloned, gangered, it contained the information for your basic construct; not wounds and scars attained after birth, modifications to your shell that are not part of the basic construct. Those burns happened to the real Pippa. Those scars are mine to carry, not yours to bear."
"Bullshit," snarled Pippa, swirling the yukana. "I'm going to cut you up."
"Check."
"What?"
"Reach behind yourself. Check."
Pippa stood, undecided, her mind fractured. The world tumbled down the years. How could this be happening? How could she doubt herself so? How could this be real? What was real? She reached behind herself, twisting, watching her clone from the corner of her eye for any tricks; and even before her fingers wormed beneath her WarSuit she knew with terrible certainty what she would find, knew what lay beneath her second skin. Her fingers touched her own cool, regular flesh. It was smooth as a baby, unblemished by fire, no scars, no terrible grafts. No, she thought. This cannot be. It is impossible. It is unreal. This cannot be happening... but she had operations, operations to repair the scars, to remove the scars, to take all the bad memories away...
The clone was messing with her mind...
Destroying her memories...
And the mind can only take so much.
And so... your world folds in.
And your momma hated you.
And your father hated you.
And your friends hate you.
Friends? What fucking friends? What is friendship except a convenient word for people to get one over on each other, stab each other in the back? Hell, yes. There's too much jealousy. Too much hate. Too much pettiness. And is that it? Is that what the human machine has become? A petty, sniping, back-stabbing pile of bullshit? What happened to honour? What happened to duty? What happened to love? Washed away, pissed away in a mudslide of a million years of pettiness.
I am not human, thought Pippa.
I am not human anymore.
"Drink."
The world was a hybrid gestalt. Nothing was real. Not guns, not ammo, not soldiers, not sex, not family, not friends, not alcohol - aah, pleasant alcohol, let me drink you down and sink in your velvet pink vulva. I don't want this anymore. I don't want this world. I don't want this existence. How could this happen to me? How could it all become so confusing? How could it all become so twisted? So fucked up? It's like a man in a bad shirt forcing his fist down your throat. Like a best friend stabbing you in the back with a rusty dagger, et tu brute and all that. Wink, wink. Like a mother pissing on your grave. Like a father giving a blow job. Like a lover drowning you in acid. Like a brother ignoring your pleas for help.
"Drink..."
She spluttered. It was acid on her tongue and in her throat and it burned, it burned bad, baby, and she screamed and lashed out, knocking the canteen away. Soothing noises came and she rested her head on cold butter which gave way, and she sank into the soft fat belly of the (under)world and wondered why all the lights had gone out.
"It wasn't supposed to be this way."
Pippa opened her eyes. She felt whole again. She felt clean again. Then she remembered she wasn't real, she was a genetic construct, a clone of a clone of a clone, a collection of genetic matter which mimicked another. And she'd done bad things. Terrible things. And what right did she have? She wasn't life. She wasn't real life. Just an imitation of a copy. But weren't we all? Aren't we all? Isn't that the way human genetics work? Longevity, earned the hard way. Codes passed down through the centuries. Fuck a long life, fuck immortality, you get immortality through your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. But that doesn't do you any good. Because you're dead. Dead and fucked.
"Sit up. We need to get moving."
Pippa's eyes snapped open, and she hissed between clenched teeth. She smashed a blow left, but her clone ducked and she laughed, laughed out loud, for none of it was real and she was the fucking clone, so the real Pippa ducked, and she was faster than her clone, better than her clone, more real, more lifelike, more human, more human, Dear God is there a heaven for the copies? If the copies believe in God, does He accept them in past the Gates of Heaven? Or is there a fast-track McChute all the way down to Hell?
After all. How can you have a soul if you were made?
How can you find peace, or love, if you're a pressing from a template?
How can you find redemption when you don't even exist?
The world spins round and round and round, and we want to get off, but we can't get off 'til we die. And that was the point. Pippa realised she wanted to die. She was tired of it all. Tired of the fight. Tired of the loss. These things never came easy. Victory never came easy. Nor redemption or love or life. And to find she wasn't really real, to find she was just a... just a fucking clone, made a mockery of her entire existence.
Implanted memories.
A rewritten history.
I don't believe in a God that I need to worship.
I don't believe in a need to get down on my knees.
Lies, lies. All lies.
But wouldn't God help? Help you how?
You need help, Pippa. You need something.
Yo
u need the Light.
You need the Path.
Pippa sighed, and drank, and sat up, and looked around at a bleak world through bleak eyes. It didn't matter that she hadn't killed Keenan's family, his wife, his children, and lost him to VOLOS. She wasn't real. She was the clone. Which meant... the real Pippa did those things. Committed those crimes. Atrocities. Betrayals.
It was all true, wasn't it? All fucking true.
Pippa was an evil, helpless, hopeless creature.
But then... aren't we all?
Pippa, the clone, looked at her real self, whom she had once believed unreal. And she pitied the reality.
"We've got to get moving," said Pippa.
"I know," said Pippa.
"The monsters are coming in the night."
"I know."
"We must fight."
"Yes."
"Together."
"As one."
Nothing mattered any more. Not identity, not individuality, not the unique; the chances were that they were both going to die. And that suited Pippa, and Pippa, just fucking fine.
The screams started. Distant wails. Claws scrabbling on stone, feet pounding scree. The hunters had tracked them. The mutations of mutations had hunted them down and Pippa and Pippa took hold of a yukana sword each and moved to the doorway, past the small fire, and stepped out into the cold wilderness of The Gangers.
From high up the dark slopes came an army of creatures. Ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred. The shapes were dark blurs under the light of a velvet moon. They moved fast, on two legs, four, six, some skidding on single ski-like appendages. Some looked like tigers and bears and wolves. But blended. Mutated. They had long claws, like scythes. Some had fangs, curving over massive jaws and glistening with snake venom. Some slithered on bellies but had the faces of women, which screamed and screamed as bulging bodies pulsed with strings of unborn children. Some were blended with insects, human faces above giant scorpion claws, or crab bodies with pincers and strings of salami intestine trailing like over-fat over-ripe sausages from punctured, bulging anus-sacks. Some were fish, clacking and snapping, dead eyes staring ahead as they slithered and ran and crawled and flopped down the scree slopes towards the two women, standing side-by-side now, standing shoulder to shoulder, together, facing a common enemy, facing death, and not just death but an eternity of suffering and agony at their hands and claws and pincers.
"We must fight together," growled Pippa.
"Yes," said Pippa.
"We will die here," said Pippa.
"Tonight," agreed Pippa.
"We will make them suffer," said Pippa.
"As we have both suffered," said Pippa.
They lifted their swords, and under a yellow moon watched calmly as the charging hordes approached.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CRASH AND BURN
Franco sat in the UChair, scowling up at General Tarly Winters and Mrs Strogger, who stood, side by side, arms folded, watching him with the baleful glares of the terminally wary. He might look like a comedy munchkin, but Tarly had read the reports and Strogger had seen him fight first hand. He was a right bloody handful when he kicked off, and no mistaking.
"We have to go back for her."
"I agree," said Tarly, and ran a hand through her red curls, "under normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances. These are exceptional circumstances, and there's a damn sight more at stake here than one little lady; we have a planet about to go supernova with an internal war you helped to start, and we have ten million rogue alien junks scouring the Four Galaxies intent on our fucking annihilation. So call me old fashioned, Franco Haggis, but in my book there's a bigger game being played. That's why I'm a QGM General and you're a dog-soldier soldier-grunt. And that's why I'm pulling rank on you."
Franco regarded Tarly for a few moments. Her anger was up, and she was flushed red. Franco narrowed his eyes a little.
"You ain't been laid in a while, have you, love?"
"What?"
"You heard."
"I'll fucking bust your balls to the brig, you whiny little bastard. What the fuck has that got to do with our current predicament? What has that got to do with saving the planet? Halting the war?"
Franco gave a little shrug. "Jealous of her, are you?"
"Clever tactic, but it won't work on me. This is not personal. And anyway, I don't have to answer to a moron."
"You do it every day when you look in the mirror."
"Franco, you're a minute away from being locked up. And Mrs Strogger here has kindly agreed to help enforce any decision I make. Not," she hissed, moving closer to stare Franco in the eyes, "that I need any help doing that."
The Kekra touched her temple, and Franco grinned, showing his missing tuff, one of the many victims from his bar-brawling days. "Not with a bullet in your skull, you can't," he said, voice now very quiet, very dangerous, because the fuckers had cooperated back on the Hornet under the pretext that they'd go back after Pippa, only now, now, just like every bastard in command Franco had ever met, back through the years, past drill instructors and sergeants, even to his old power-hungry, ego-infused, spunk-stained old Headmaster at Botton School for Boys, Killian Britchards, they were pulling rank, changing the rules, changing the game, and as usual Franco was stuck in the middle with his head up his arse. It was always the same; the people with the power did what the fuck they liked, and to hell with the Little Guy. Well, this Little Guy had given many nasty people many nasty shocks in his lifetime; he was a distillation of surprise, and the Master of Mayhem to those who tried to take advantage. Which was most people.
"Are you threatening a superior QGM Officer?" came Tarly's soft, dangerous voice.
"Ha-ha-ha, of course not," mumbled Franco, and the gun went click. "See, no mag. I was only fucking witcha. But the point is, you fucking promised we'd go after Pippa. And now you're reneging on our deal. The deal that got me back here. Hell, I was happy to go over that cliff after her. But oh, no, you had to make your false fucking General-promises, like all you snivelling Top Brass do, then pull the plug and flick the switch and turn Franco off when Franco's ready to go! Well, Franco is here to tell you he won't take no shit, and he won't let Pippa die because you didn't have the balls - quite literally - to go after her and help."
Tarly moved away, poured herself a drink, and sipped it, looking at Franco over the swirling amber liquid. "Hmm," she said.
Outside, engines hummed. Space was black. Cloneworld was distant, a swirling blue-grey mass peppered with clouds, a planetary clone of Old Earth, Bad Earth, Shit Earth. The irony was not lost on Franco. He was a lot more sophisticated than he looked. A lot more. Although you wouldn't believe it.
Franco uncurled from the UCouch and stretched, looking to his right, out of the porthole. Stars flickered. Franco cracked his knuckles. He stared back at Tarly, challenge in his eyes and in his face. He looked calm, but a beast raged within him and Tarly could see it; had seen such things, a million times before. She hadn't got to the position of general by being a dumb ass. Just by being brutal.
"So what's it to be, eh?" said Franco.
"New things have come to light."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yes."
"Such as?"
"Mrs Strogger, and your quite masterful exfil of such an important personage."
"Eh? The old crone?"
"Hah! Bastad!"
Franco stared at Strogger. Stared at Mrs Strogger. Stared at - what had she said? Strogger 7576889? And Franco had to remember that Mrs Strogger had five hundred and thirty-three children. That was a lot of children. That took stamina. That took resourcefulness. It showed a certain... masochistic tendency.
Franco stared at Mrs Strogger. Stared hard. He'd kind of got used to having her around during recent exploits. She had become, he shuddered to admit, like part of the furniture. Now, he reappraised her. Her old and wrinkled skin. The malevolent green glow, deep in her eyes. The spikes along her arms. The mechanical legs and armoured f
eet, ready to leave an imprint in steel, baby, steel! He watched her chromed teeth clacking manically. Looked at the bad join where her greased midriff-piston could elevate her to the rank of, well, to the rank of very tall org. He listened to the clanking and whirring, and breathed in the stench of aged engines and manky old oil. She stank like a backstreet mechanic's workshop. She oozed exhaust ports. She ejaculated decay.
"What about her?"
"She's special," said Tarly.
"You're damn right she is," said Franco. "Special needs."
Tarly sighed. Glanced up, as if expecting Alice, the ship's computer, to help - but Alice kind of liked Franco, and was capricious for a ship's computer, so she kept quiet and let Tarly sweat, and enjoyed the scene for what it was: entertainment for a thousand-year old mind.
"Explain," said Franco, as he moved to the InfinityChef. He punched in several digits and the device buzzed, like a fart, as if the billion-dollar top-of-the-range perfect culinary machine was quite literally offended by the choice Franco had forced it to create. There came a pause. From the slot emerged a long, quivering, grease-smeared sausage like nothing Tarly Winters, nor indeed Mrs Strogger, had ever seen in their lives. To call it phallic was an insult to the phallus, all the more painful an association by the way Franco tore the end savagely from the wiener and chewed, cubes of gristle gleaming between his teeth. He waved the long, quivering sausage at Tarly. "Go on then. Spill the beans, Bagpuss."
"Bag -" she frowned. "Okay, sausage-brain, it goes like this. Mrs Strogger, here, this lovely old, er, lady, is a very important person in the Realms of the Org. She is revered and considered Holy across the entirety of The Org States."