Cloneworld - 04

by Andy Remic

  "Well," said Franco brightly, "it's unfortunate Alice went swimming down with the ship, hey? Now we'll never know what happened, because if there was a gross incompetence issue then we'd need to know about it, because crashing a Hornet is a big thing, right, but hey it's a shame, not that I'm saying it was some kind of incompetency spillage issue or anything, because that would just be insane, and I'm sure Alice in all her wonderful wisdom would have seen any such depravity on its way to the Asylum Dock. Yeah?"

  "Are you still drunk?" said Tarly.

  "Only on love juice," grinned Franco, and shuffled closer.

  "Anyway," said Tarly, frowning at him, "we will get to know what happened. I've got Alice's BBR here."

  "Her BBR?" said Franco, heart sinking as he looked at the small black cube in Tarly's gloved hands.

  "Yes. Black Box Recording. Although in reality it's more complex than that, because it's a BCube. Alice's Brain Cube. Just because her shell, her whole ship has been destroyed, doesn't mean QGM are going to junk her fucking mind, does it?"

  "What, so that there box is her CPU?" snapped Franco, eyes wide.

  "More than that," said Tarly. "It's her. She's all clammed up at the moment; a preventative measure due to the crash. She'll come round soon enough. Reboot herself. Like a turtle emerging from its shell after being used in a game of volleyball. Then she'll tell us what really happened. Should take her a few hours; or that's what the specsheets claim."

  "You read the specsheets?" said Franco, aghast. It was rare he even read his Mission Directive.

  "Oh yes," said Tarly, and gave Franco a slow wink. "I like to be prepared for any eventuality."

  "Okay, you guys, listen up," said Queen Strogger, and now, despite her wizened old appearance, mixed in with that of a rusting old mekbot, she seemed that little bit more... assertive. She was getting closer to home. She was out of Clone Terra, over The Teeth, and on her way to the good old Org States.

  "I suppose you have a plan?" said Franco, feeling suddenly weary. Here he was, in enemy territory - so to speak - in just his combat shorts and sandals. This was a familiar feeling. God had a way of catching Franco Haggis with his pants round his ankles.

  "We need to fire the engines," said Strogger. "And head east."

  "You're nearly home," said Tarly, and placed a hand on hers.

  The org smiled and gave a nod. But her glowing green eyes seemed to grow more intense, and Franco felt he had a premonition; suddenly, the old org didn't feel quite so friendly, and he felt just a little bit like a pawn in somebody else's diseased shitgame.

  "I'll soon be back on the throne," she whispered.

  Dawn was breaking. Franco was cold, and he and Tarly had snuggled together for warmth, her in her pink pyjamas, and he with his bushy masculine chest. As he'd pointed out, though, it was all about survival. And he'd failed to pack WarSuits in the crates.

  Still huddled together, as a salty sea breeze washed over them, and waves lapped the sides of the boat through an early morning mist, Tarly pulled away a little and stared at Franco.

  "You packed the emergency crates?" she said, softly, half-confused by sleep.

  "Oh yes," said Franco.

  Tarly considered this. "But they're hermetically sealed," she said.

  "I hermetically unsealed them," Franco said.

  "But why?" asked Tarly, slowly.

  Franco grinned, showing his missing tooth. "Well, you know, I wouldn't like to trust my life in an emergency situation to some other fucking monkey garbage, would I?"

  Tarly felt a groan welling within her. "Franco," she said, "the emergency crates are packed by QGM. They contain everything you could possibly need in an emergency situation on any of the worlds in the Life Bubble. I mean, food, shelters, oxygen, everything. Every eventuality. They're the product of centuries of research! Statistics! Science!"

  "Yes. But."

  "'Yes, but' what?"

  "Well, all this research baloney is just donkey bollocks, isn't it? Hey, I have my own Franco lifestyle to think about, alreet? For example, I wouldn't like to be trapped out in the wilderness with no damn and bloody horseradish to speak of."

  "Horseradish?"

  "Or sausages."

  "Sausages."

  "So I repacked the emergency crates."

  "Franco, that's illegal."

  "Ach, fuck off."

  "And it's immoral!"

  "Get fucked and over to fuck."

  "You'll be court-martialled for this!"

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah, lock me up. Stop moaning. We have everything we need, right?"

  Tarly stood, taking charge. Leaning forward slightly to counter the thrust of the boat as it headed east, its engines on stealth, she moved to the first crate. She punched in the release code and the digital locks hummed, releasing the lid. Inside, there were lots of tins.

  "Lots of tins?" she said, slowly.

  Franco appeared beside her, staring over the rim of the emergency crate. "Yeah," he said, frowning. "Food rations. And stuff."

  "What food?"

  "PreCheese."

  "Go on."

  "Cube Sausage."

  "Go on."

  "Jars of horseradish. Well, you have to spice up the PreCheese and Cube Sausage, don't you, because it all tastes so fucking rancid."

  "The thought occurs, Francis, that you could just pack something that wasn't rancid?"

  "Never thought of that."

  "What else?"

  "What do you mean, 'what else'?"

  "What other foodstuffs?"

  "PreCheese."

  "You said that."

  "Cube Sausage."

  "You said that, as well."

  "Weeeell..."

  "If you say 'horseradish,' you're going over the side, buddy. I didn't train to be an elite assassin killer to listen to the ramblings of an idiot on a boat."

  "Inflatable."

  "Whatever. So go on. What other food have you brought? We could be marooned here for weeks. Months."

  "I confess," said Franco, holding up both hands, palms outwards as early morning rays of crimson bounced from the metal of his cyborg little finger, "that that pretty much sums up our menu for the duration."

  "Just PreCheese, Cube Sausage and horseradish?"

  "Yup."

  "Are you fucking insane?"

  Franco considered this. "Yup," he said. "But look on the bright side. You're the guys who keep giving me contracts, yeah? I must be doing something right!" He grinned, and it was a Big Grin, and it was The Grin of the Mad.

  "So what else have you packed into the Franco-style emergency rations for the terminally suicidal?"

  "Stuff."

  "Stuff?"

  "Yeah, stuff."

  "Like what stuff?"

  Franco shrugged. His lower lip had come out a little bit.

  "Are there medical kits?"

  "No."

  "Oxygen tanks?"

  "No."

  "Rebreathers?"

  "No."

  "Alien-Inoc pills?"

  "Um... no."

  "Antibiots? Nanopills? Warpills?"

  "No. No. And, er, no."

  "Hydrapills?"

  "No."

  "Tools?"

  "I got my sonic screwdriver!"

  "Very funny. Real tools?"

  "No."

  "Body bags?"

  "Why would I need body bags?"

  "Haven't you worked that one out yet?"

  "Ahh. I see."

  "Guns?"

  "Of course, guns! Yes!"

  "At last," muttered Tarly, as Franco removed another lid from another crate and displayed a small arsenal of weaponry. There were Techrims, Kekras, D5, D6 and D7 shotguns, MPKs, and many, many boxes of ammunition, along with knives and TagLasers.

  "See," said Franco, puffing out his chest. "I'm not completely devoid of my senses. Weapons and food. All that a bad girl wants."

  "Hmm," said Tarly, and lifted a D5. She loaded it with ff micro-shells, and pumped the weapon with a sa
tisfying cla-clack. "The irony is," she said, half smiling, "we're pretty much on friendly soil now. We're with Queen Strogger and heading for her homeland. It's not like we're going to need weapons, is it?"

  "I wouldn't say that," said Queen Strogger, quietly.

  "How's that, then?" said Franco.

  "Yes, I am Queen of the orgs. But our land is, shall we say, a very dangerous place."

  "With what?" snapped Franco.

  "Rogue orgs," said Strogger, simply. "They're everywhere. They roam the Badlands, the Wildlands, the Heartlands, the Fuklands. There's the DIYers, lashed-up half-machines with a grudge against any org who didn't do it yourself. Vast, ugly brutes! They're not very bright."

  "Okay," said Tarly, slowly. "And what else?"

  "There's the Dorgs, which roam in packs. An experiment that went wrong, hundreds of years ago. Then there's all manner of corrupt systems and AI self-built self-modified freaks of metal and bondage which roam the land and sea."

  "Land and sea, you say?" said Franco, looking nervously over the side of the boat. Sorry; inflatable.

  Queen Strogger gave a brittle laugh. "Oh, don't be silly. Nothing in the water - the salt rots components faster than you removed Opera's head! No, these are..."

  "Go on?"

  "Well, like, pirates."

  "Pirates?" said Franco, and stared at Tarly, but Tarly was staring across the Teeth Ocean behind him. She gave a short nod.

  "You mean, like those?" she said, quietly.

  Queen Strogger turned, as did Franco. They stared at the huge, old galleon, vast and black-timbered, and sitting on the horizon like a cat on a fence. It seemed motionless, its vast sails billowing gently in the dawn light. Franco could have sworn the sails were black. With some kind of white, skeletal motif.

  "Er," said Tarly.

  "Ha, don't worry," grinned Franco. "Don't ye worry ye not about that old heap of rusting shitty sea wreckage! This is a Quad-Gal Military boat, good for a billion miles on the same hydrogen cell. That fucking heap of junk wouldn't stand a chance catching us."

  "Good," said Tarly, voice tight.

  "Why good?"

  "Because they've just seen us."

  Franco grinned, and flapped his hand with a look of scornful dismissal on his face. "Look, don't ye worry ye none. One, they couldn't catch us if their lives depended on it; and two, and this kinda makes me laugh 'til I poop in my pants, but they have old cannons. Oh, ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum, me hearties, those ol' cannon balls wouldn't reach us in a billion, trillion, million..."

  There came a distant boom, and a flash of actinic fire, accompanied by billows of smoke, a long drawn-out whistling sound, and an explosion of water several metres from their inflatable boat, which sent a small wave washing over them, drenching them instantly and nearly capsizing the little rubber vessel.

  "Shee-at!" screeched Franco.

  "You were saying?" snapped Tarly, infused with anger.

  In the distance, the org pirate ship had fully made its turn. Around it, something seemed to glow on the water, which started to thrash. A whine reverberated, like a slap across the rolling ocean, crashing from the ship in a wild acoustic rhythm. The pirate ship started to accelerate. It was fast. No. Shit. It was fast.

  "Er," said Franco.

  "It's had upgrades," said Queen Strogger, almost wearily. Her face had a haunted, hunted look. "Just as I thought we were, aha, out of the water. What did that wise old Philosopher The Meechelle Org III say? Out of the fire and into the frying pan?" She covered her face with her armoured hands. "If they discover who I am..."

  "Yes?" said Franco, only half interested.

  "They'll burn me alive."

  "Oh." He considered this. "What kind of upgrades have they got?"

  "A hyperdrive."

  "Pretty impressive, for an old sea galleon. Does it, er, work?"

  "Well, our patrol boats could never catch them," growled Strogger.

  "Ah." Franco was watching the huge barnacle-encrusted pirate galleon. Despite his foolhardy mocking, avast, the ship was gaining on them at quite a lick. On the upper deck Franco could almost, if he squinted hard enough, imagine a hearty crew of large and fearsome deformed cyborgs wearing, if he wasn't very much mistaken, period costume. "Oh, gods," he said. "How do I get myself into this mad brain-twisting shit, time after time?"

  It's your own fucking fault, hissed his subconscious. You crashed the bloody Hornet, remember?

  "They're catching us," said Tarly, calmly, and started strapping various guns around and about her lithe, powerful body. "If they catch us, I'm not going out without a fucking fight!"

  Franco scrambled for the guns, and strapped a goodly number about himself as well, until he bristled like a steel hedgehog.

  Then they stood, watching the galleon bear down on them.

  There was little else they could do.

  Its vast, barnacle-encrusted timbers reared over them, creaking, and Franco had been right. The crew were vast and fearsome looking, a hybrid army of men and women, heavily machine-augmented, totally ugly in their shining, spiky, gear-driven ferocity. The ship's engines whined, and the hyperdrive which made the sea glow suddenly powered down. The galleon towered over the little QGM inflatable, and nudged it gently, with a tiny... bump.

  "They're The Pirates," said Queen Strogger.

  "Eh?" snapped Franco.

  "The Pirates of the Orgibbean."

  "Ahoy there!" boomed a vast, reverberating, totally machismo-infused voice from above. "This is Cap'n Bluetit, a-har! Known as the Rabid Arsehole of the Ocean - and I've been called a lot worse even by the people I love, so I have, a-har-har-har - and let me tell you, weak meat humans, you are about to be boarded! So submit your weapons, drop your trousers, bend over, and... a-har-har! take it like a man!"

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SLUSH PUPPY

  Pippa's sword gleamed under the yellow moon. She stared without emotion at the charging wall of deviated gangers. There were men with three heads, no lips, and teeth gnashing like fevered surgery victims. There were women, totally naked, long and spindly limbs thrashing as they ran, squealing with the voices of the babies they'd ingested. There were curious hybrids, of men, women, dogs, cats, rats, men with furry ears and whiskers, women with the wings of birds flapping like bloodied fans from their knobbly shoulder-blades.

  "We're going to die," said Pippa, rolling her neck.

  "Not if I have anything to do with it," said her clone, twirling the yukana sword.

  Then a noise crashed over the surroundings, echoing and reverberating from towering mountain walls. It was a rhythm of thunder, of hissing and smashing, and Pippa blinked as she realised it was the spinning rotors of a helicopter gunship... the same gunship that had attacked their hornet alongside a backup retinue of AI gunbots!

  She set her mouth in a grim line. These were her clone's masters - the enemy. She suddenly laughed out loud at her choices: to die at the hands of the deviant gangers? Or their creators?

  The gunship reared over the mountains, huge photofloods cutting through the night and making the charging deviants falter, howling and throwing up their arms, legs and tentacles to cover their eyes. Many turned and fled, aware of what was to follow... and follow it did. The miniguns screamed, as thousands of rounds cut into the mutants' ranks. Then, with a thunderous clanking, two rogue AI gunbots, like tall slender mechs with heavy missiles strapped to their arms, their slick alloy heads shining, came charging down the narrow paths from over the mountains, kicking house-sized boulders aside, their heavy steel claws gouging the rock.

  "The cavalry has arrived," said Pippa's clone.

  Pippa gave a nod. "Looks like you won." She tilted her head.

  Her clone gave her a strange look, and stood up straight, gazing at the hundreds of fleeing deviant gangers. They were making a spirited attempt at escape, but the gunship had other ideas. The ship's rockets left trails of exhaust smoke, as explosions filled the rocky valley. Flames gushed and roared, and the twisted gang
ers were tossed like broken skittles, some on fire, their screams echoing against the dark vaults of heaven, many torn and shattered into hundreds of pieces.

  Pippa turned away, then looked up to the gunship wreaking havoc on the ganger deviants. She could see a face in there, framed by a shock of barbed-wire black hair. The face was a concentrated funnel, a ferret of concentration as she - for it was a woman, Pippa realised - mowed down the ganger mob without remorse.

  Fire blossomed from the red-hot gun barrels. Pippa ground her teeth.

  "We've got to stop her!"

  Her clone glanced at Pippa, and gave a nod.

  "So you'll help me?" Incredulous.

  "You saved my life."

  The two women, genetically the same woman, stared at one other. Above them, the gunship lifted a little, and its blazing searchlights swept backwards and forwards, as behind it the AI gunbots came to a halt on the side of the mountain cliffs, perched precariously a thousand feet from the valley floor, like monkeys on the branches of a rocky tree. Their heads swivelled. In the gunship, Teddy Sourballs resumed firing heavy-calibre minigun rounds at the fleeing gangers. Bullets churned through flesh. Limbs were shot off. Bodies merged into the soil...

  "What I'd give for a gun," growled Pippa... as the incredible happened. The two AI gunbots leapt, as one, crashing through the rotors of the gunship with high-pitched squeals of compressing, folding, breaking steel and taking hold of the huge gunship. The engines screamed, sparks and fire ejecting from the smashed machine, and the miniguns scored trails into the rocky walls as the helicopter spun around and around, as if fighting the gunbots. Then the whole screaming, flailing, spinning mess of merged metal and folding steel nose-dived, ploughing into the canyon floor. Pillars of fire spat from the fuel tanks as the AIs jumped free and stood, hands on hips, surveying the destruction they had wrought.

  "Shit," breathed Pippa, as after-images of the fire danced on her retinas.

  "What happened then?" said her clone.

  "I thought they'd reprogrammed the gunbots? As slaves? I thought they were immune?"

  The clone shrugged. "They did. Maybe they had a change of heart, seeing so many helpless gangers ploughed into the rocks. Come on. Let's go see what happened."