Cloneworld - 04

by Andy Remic

  "Oh, it's okay, they're still arguing about where to hang her from. They always do this. When one pirate org says something, all the others have to say something different. It's like a backward pecking order, or something. Worse than children, they are. That's why I self-terminated their purchase regulation. I'm a free agent, so I am."

  "That's okay then," said Franco, warily. "After all, last thing we need on a mission like this is a stupid Metal Mongrels Inc. DumbMutt tagging along. Eh?"

  He stepped forward.

  "Shall I let it go?"

  "No," said Franco. "Give it 'ere."

  Tarly handed the dodgy green parrot to Franco, who lifted it to his face. It peered at him inquisitively with bright little eyes. "Now, you listen to me," he said, scowling in the smoky gloom.

  "Of course, your wish is my command," said Polly the Parrot.

  "Eh?"

  "You have invoked my ownership." The parrot's head spun around a full 360°. Then its mouth opened, and in a different voice, Polly the Parrot said, "Congratulations! on your purchase of the DumbMutt v1.7 special robotic friend. This special little friend will be your friend. A friend for life! Please find enclosed the instruction manual and ownership deed in a variety of Quad-Gal languages, Braille and scent-censorship tucked away in a tidy Plumage-Partition[tm]." There was a pause. Franco went pale, and shook the bird, but his hands froze rigid around the little bird and he couldn't let go.

  "No!" he howled. "No, no, not again!"

  "Thank you, Franco Haggis, Quad-Gal resident DNA number 67536753476453764575324652. As you read this, a genetic sample has been taken from your fingertips and relayed digitally to the DumbMutt's brain. She is now yours. She will never leave your side. She is forthwith electronically registered to your unique DNA number and as such will follow you to the ends of whatever planet you inhabit [insert here] or travel to [insert here] or plan to travel to [insert here] for ever. If you lose your DumbMutt v1.7 special robotic friend, do not fret, because she will eventually find you. If you vacate the planet, she has emergency funds to book passage on a shuttle to anywhere within the Quad-Gal bubble. In effect, your DumbMutt v1.7 (a much advanced model!) special friend will follow you to the ends of the Galaxy. Well done in this, the Smart Choice!"

  "No no no!" sobbed Franco, and Tarly looked on, bemused.

  "Why don't you just drop the little thing?"

  "I can't! I can't! It's electric-shocking my hands! Get it off, get it off!"

  Tarly tried to prize the parrot from Franco's hands, but it was as if it was spot-welded into position. Franco's fingers were more rigid than a steel exo-skeleton. Tarly and Franco struggled with the bird, green feathers spitting everywhere, and the damn bird continued to speak, stubbornly, in the voice of a salesperson/engineer. "We do hope you enjoy your DumbMutt v1.7 special robotic friend. She will be a very special robotic friend. For life. Your special friend DumbMutt v1.7 comes with many exciting innovations and technical upgrades over the previous DumbMutt v1.6, which tended to burst into atomic overdrive and decimate entire cities. Don't worry! That doesn't happen anymore! Not often, anyway [please read legal addendum]. Your friendly special friend DumbMutt v1.7 is called [Polly]. Please be kind to it. And remember. A robot parrot is for life not just for [insert applicable religious festival]. ©hv3801 Metal Mongrels Inc. QGSMA Quad-Gal Safety Mark Assured (pending)."

  Franco was abruptly released, and he dropped the parrot like a steaming turd. It fell, and an inch from the ground ignited on a fiery jet and hovered in front of Franco, a big beam on its beaked face.

  "Well done, Franco! The Smart Choice!"

  "I didn't make no fucking choice," growled Franco, and waved his fist.

  "Please take good care of your DumbMutt v1.7 [Polly]-model. Your DNA has now been registered with the MMI central core database. Your deed will last: 999 years. Thank you for your custom. ©hv3801 Metal Mongrels Inc. QGSMA Quad-Gal Safety Mark Assured (pending)."

  The parrot grinned at him.

  Tarly placed her hand on Franco's shoulder. "Come on. It might be of some help."

  "Yeah. Right! We can put it in a cannon and fire the fucker at the pirates!"

  "Squawk! I know you're only kidding," said the parrot. "Just think of the adventures we will share! The places we will visit! The photographs I will take of your exploits, uploaded straight to the GGG Flicker Database! No secret shall go unshared! No sexual triumph unsung! You will be on public parade, Franco Haggis, from now until the expiry of my nine-hundred and ninety-nine-year contract! Squawk!"

  "Come on," growled Franco, and Tarly followed him out of the cell. Then he stopped, and pointed at the parrot. "If you blow our cover in any way, or get us in any trouble whatsoever, I'll pull off your damn bastard wings and chuck you in the sea. You got that?"

  "Oh, yes, oh, yes, squawk! Buster! Friend!"

  "And don't call me buster!"

  "Okay, buster!"

  Franco peered from the top of the steps. Rain had started to fall, and the galleon's deck was slick with rain. Dark clouds flashed overhead. The pirate orgs were clustered around the foot of the mast, and there, tied to the rigging, was Queen Strogger, head down, the epitome of misery. The pirates were still arguing about what to do, lit occasionally by a blue flash from the org net imprisoning the old cyborg.

  "What shall we do?" whispered Tarly.

  "Rush them," said Franco.

  "Franco, there's seventy of them, and two of us."

  "I know. We'll outnumber them two to seventy!"

  "You couldn't beat them last time, remember?"

  "Ah yes, but now I'm armed."

  "With a chain?"

  "A chain will lead to a sword will lead to a gun. You watch. You'll see. I have hate on my side."

  "And a lack of skin."

  "No need to get personal, lass," he said.

  "Wait! Look!"

  Franco scowled. "Where? For what? Which direction?"

  "That direction," said Tarly, smiling and pointing. It was another ship. Another big ship. This ship did not fly a pirate flag, the traditional skull and crossbones, as Cap'n Bluetit's galleon did. Could it be friendly? Could it, hope of hopes, contain org soldiers on their way to rescue their queen?

  "Looks kind of... old and decrepit," said Franco, rubbing his nose. "What is it with this place? They spend all their money and efforts on upgrading their own bodies, and let everything around them fall into rat-shit? You'd think if they had no aircraft, their ships would be sleek and perfect. Not ancient timber vessels sporting bloody cannons - okay, I'll grant you, this one has a hyperdrive, but that's been nicked, not developed, I'd bet you both my rosy arse cheeks on it!"

  "Shh. Watch!"

  The pirates had also noticed the ship, and Cap'n Bluetit hurried over to the galleon's huge wooden wheel. He pressed a button and the wheel flipped over, revealing a control panel. His hands glided over the controls, as his voice boomed "Man the cannons! A-har!"

  "They're going to attack," said Tarly as, deep down in the bowels of the ship, they felt the thrum of a massive power source, and the hyperdrive came alive. The galleon began to vibrate, the wood beneath Franco and Tarly's hands shivering as if transcribing a violent earthquake.

  "Attack, attack, attack, squawk!" squawked the parrot. Franco scowled at the robot bird, which shrugged, losing several small green feathers. "Gotta do it," it winked. "All in keeping with the character, right, buster?"

  The galleon lurched forward, carving through the Teeth Ocean as the pirates ran to their stations, many pulling ropes and hooks, knives and carbines from wooden lockers.

  The rain increased, and thunder rent the stormy heavens.

  "They're going to ram it," said Tarly, as rain thrashed down at her and the galleon picked up ever more speed. Before them, the other large ship had started to turn, and they could see matchstick figures running around the deck, pulling on ropes, altering sails. But they had no chance of escape; they had no hyperdrive engine, for a start - an engine that could ram a modest sized
spacefighter from sea level to void space in two minutes flat. If Cap'n Bluetit had opened the hyperdrive to full capacity, the galleon would have punched a hole through the enemy ship and then through The Teeth mountains beyond!

  "Prepare for attack, a-har!" screamed Cap'n Bluetit.

  "What's the plan?" said Tarly.

  "Let them attack, then nick their ship?" suggested Franco.

  "You have a wicked mind," said Tarly.

  "Hey, they don't call me Franco 'Razor Brain' Haggis for nothing, you know?" He grinned, but the grin turned into a grimace as his lashed back reminded him why he hated the org pirates so much.

  The galleon was bearing down on the smaller ship now, and at the last minute it slewed sideways and cannons boomed. Cannon balls decimated the ship, slamming through her masts and sails and rigging, leaving the side of the vessel peppered like an overenthusiastic pepper-pot.

  "Board the bastards, a-har!" bellowed Cap'n Bluetit, and it could clearly be seen his blood was up, the rage upon him, and he was enjoying every damn second of it.

  The galleon A Nice Lady pulled alongside the stricken ship, and boarding ropes were tossed aboard. The hooks clunked and orgs heaved, and the two ships pulled together with a deep, reverberating boom. The pirates drew their cutlasses and, swords and carbines in hand, leapt aboard what was now obviously an org merchant vessel. The merchants, a lower class of org mechanical than the ones invading, clustered together at the centre of the deck, hands in the air, unsure of what to do, whilst a few brave souls ejected blades and guns from the ends of their mechanical arms and a brief fight ensued. Blades clashed, sending sparks flying in the air, and carbines hummed and spat, kicking several orgs - pirates included - from their feet.

  "Time to boogie," said Franco, leaping up and heading for the nearest pirate org still on his feet. He was holding a rope and watching the boarding with interest.

  Franco tapped him on the shoulder, having to stand on tip-toe to do so. "Excuse me, my good man," he said.

  The pirate org turned into a right hook that carried all the pain and hate of twenty lashes under the Cat O'Nine. Franco laid the org out in one blow, breaking his cheek bone and jaw along with a bone in his own hand.

  "Ouch! Bugger."

  Franco hurriedly pulled off the pirate's colourful jacket and hat, and dressed himself quickly, wincing as the fabric caressed his tortured flesh. He glanced at Tarly, through sheets of rain, and said, "What do you think?"

  "A disguise?"

  "Hey, they don't call me Franco 'Rubber Face' Haggis for nothing, you know! I does the job, and I gets the job done!" He fastened the org's belt around his waist and weighed the cutlass thoughtfully. "Time to go to work," he said. "You keep a low profile until we're free. Then hit that bloody hyperdrive and get us the hell out of here!"

  "Aye, aye, Cap'n," said Tarly, face straight.

  "Not even funny, bitch."

  Fights were still kicking off aboard the mechant vessel in pockets of violent resistance. Carbines cracked. A bullet took the lobe off Cap'n Bluetit's ear in a spray of blood and he started screaming hysterically, unaware that the sniper was Franco, crouching over another laid-out pirate and putting his marksman skills to good use.

  "A good shot, squawk!" said Polly.

  "Rubbish! I was aiming for his brain!"

  Franco strode down the starboard rail, his cutlass slashing ropes. He did it calmly, methodically, and for a long time nobody even noticed what he was doing. In his mind, he counted. "Twenty-five ropes, twenty-six, twenty-seven... nearly there! A-har indeed!"

  Franco turned, sodden from the downpour, and signalled to Tarly, up by the galleon's wheel and hyperdrive controls. There were still five orgs aboard the vessel, and possibly seventy aboard the attacked, ravaged ship...

  Suddenly, somebody shouted, "Oi!" in the time-mannered tradition of anybody finding a ginger midget destroying your plans for loot and rape and pillage and slaughter. The org stood in front of Franco, and Franco remembered the lashings, and remembered they weren't playing any games anymore - if indeed, they ever had - and these pirate orgs were nasty scumshit, and out for the shit and the kill. He grinned and unloaded his stolen carbine in the org's face, blowing his metal nose out the back of his head to rattle off across the deck in a spew of shavings and blood.

  Franco's grin faded, as the org refused to fall. Shit, he thought, that's pretty tough, that is. Nose shot through the back of your head, brain a mush of mushroom soup in your skull, and you're still fucking standing! That's tough, my man. That's pretty fucking damn bitch hard!

  The org was still groping at the hole in his face like a man trying to unblock a toilet, when Franco reached him, bent, grabbed his legs and tipped him over the side. He hit the waters with a splash, and Franco hoisted his cutlass. Four ropes to go!

  "You there!" shouted Cap'n Bluetit, who had turned, and was staring incredulously at Franco's handiwork, as if he could scarce believe somebody would do that to him and his ship. "I, I, I... you, you, you... stop it! Stop it, you hear! I say, stop it!"

  Franco gave him the finger, and cut another rope. And another. And another...

  "Shoot him!" screamed Cap'n Bluetit, and at least fifty weapons turned on Franco, who squawked and ducked as bullets chewed the wood alongside his head.

  "Kill him!" Another volley ate in the barnacle-encrusted wood.

  "Pulp him!" A third volley tore across the ship, bullets whining and pinging from a mad array of stolen projectile weapons spanning five centuries of piracy.

  Franco crawled forward, popped up like a mole from a hole, and slashed another rope. More bullets screamed overhead, and, peering through a ragged hole, Franco saw the pirates running back towards the rail and their shortly-to-be-hijacked ship.

  "A-har indeed," growled Franco, and gave Tarly the signal as he leapt up, probably in slow-motion, and bullets whined through the air, cutting past him and around him, and he was balanced on the rail with one hand, and his cutlass swung down with heroic precision, as Tarly hit the hyperdrive and the galleon moaned, and groaned, and shook, and shot off across the Teeth Ocean like a cat with a scalded arse.

  Cap'n Bluetit stood on his new, stricken vessel, mouth agape, hands on hips, filled like a jug to the brim with disbelief. "I just don't believe it," said the pirate org. "I just don't bloody believe it!"

  One of his subordinates sidled up to him. "You all right, Cap'n?"

  "Of course I'm not fucking all right!" he screamed, and slapped the dumb pirate across his metal skull. "They took my ship and all my gold and my collection of fine ganger silk underwear! Would you be alright? Eh? I ask you!"

  "Er, Cap'n, they're heading on a bearing of seventeen degrees, right?"

  "And?"

  "Well, isn't that a direct heading for the, er, you know? The Mouth of the Ocean?"

  "So it is!"

  Cap'n Bluetit smiled, suddenly, and looked around at his crew. "Get working, lads. We're going after my ship. A-har!"

  Franco and Tarly had overpowered the remaining rogue pirate orgs, and thrown them over the side for good measure, to sink under the weight of their metal. Franco watched them disappear under the waves, but his face went hard. "Fuck 'em," he said. "They made their fortune robbing and killing innocent folk. They gets what they deserves."

  "Quite right, buster, squawk!" said Polly.

  Franco scowled at the bird, but said nothing, instead focusing on the bright horizon, filled with layered shafts of blue, magenta and orange.

  "We did it," he said.

  "We did," agreed Tarly.

  They'd cut Queen Strogger down, who had sustained only minimal damage to her flesh and cyborg components. The only thing injured seemed to be her pride, and she made a vow to hunt down all pirates across The Teeth Ocean and destroy them utterly when she was returned to power on the Org Throne at Org.

  The wind streamed through Franco's slightly reduced, square-bottomed beard. One hand on the controls, he piloted the galleon smoothly across the rolling Teeth Ocean.<
br />
  "This is grand," he said.

  "Indeed," said Tarly, and she moved in close to him, and snuggled up to him a bit. "You were quite heroic back there, Franco, to tell you the honest truth."

  "Hey!" he said, and frowned, because he couldn't think of a name he'd been called which would perfectly sum up his current situation. "You know what, darling?" he said. "I could get used to this, a life on the ocean waves, just my good woman by my side, the wind in my beard, all nautical stuff inside my head; I think it'd be a reet good break from soldiering, I do."

  "I'm hardly a good woman," said Tarly.

  "Okay then, with my psychopathic assassin-killer QGM General by my side. How's that sound?"

  "You don't mind that I'm a psychopath?" said Tarly, gazing into his eyes.

  "Hey, what woman isn't?" grinned Franco, then held up both hands as she slapped him. "Joke! Joke! I beg a truce!"

  Ahead, on the glittering ocean, a school of dolphins leapt from the waves, and in a surge of surf they ploughed on alongside the fast-powered galleon, smiling faces turned slightly to one side as if regarding the humans at the prow of this anachronistic, hyperdrive-powered vessel.

  "Beautiful!" said Tarly, breathing deep the salty ocean air.

  "Stunning," agreed Franco, as he watched the dolphins accelerate past the ship and disappear over the horizon. "But hot damn, I just didn't realise they could swim so fast!"

  "They can't, squawk!" squawked Polly. "You're heading for The Mouth of the Ocean!"

  "The What of the What?" scowled Franco, thinking oh yeah, here we go again, one more bloody damn and bloody problem to deal with, out of the fire and into the frying pan, an' all that!

  "It's an ocean whirlpool!" squawked the robot parrot. "It'll suck you in and suck you down and crush you into component atoms! You have to turn around, head the other bloody way! Squawk!"

  "Hey, don't you worry you none," said Franco, flapping his hand as if to wave away a minor problem. "Is that all? A liddle widdle ocean whirlpool? This fucking hyperdrive could take us into orbit, baby! It'll be a super-hyper-match for some liddle biddle bit of bibble wibble water current any damn ocean could throw at us. You just watch and see. Now. See? See?"