by Andy Remic
"Oh no," said Tarly.
"Oh yes," said Franco.
"They're Moles, right?"
"That's right, sugar-plum tree."
Tarly stopped. She put her hands on her hips. "Tell me, please Franco, tell me you're not thinking of tunnelling all the fucking way to Clone Terra! Tell me that insane thought hasn't gone through your tepid skull!"
"Hey, have you ever seen these babies go? They blast through the rock so fast they're a blur, mate! I saw a documentary on them a few years back. About QGM using them to infiltrate enemy wotsits, and all that. You know. Tunnel under enemy lines. Plant bombs. That sort of shit."
"I remember that documentary," said Tarly, voice level, eyes narrowed. "The Moles kept hitting pockets of gas and exploding."
"That's the monkey!"
"And sometimes, they'd hit pockets of oil, and explode!"
"Aye! That's the donkey!"
"Sometimes," she said, with a narrow smile that had nothing to do with humour, "they'd just explode."
"Ach, just teething problems."
"Franco, they're fucking dangerous. Like taken-off-the-market dangerous, like responsible-for-thousands-of-people-dying dangerous. You getting this into your thick skull? You observing a common thread here?"
"Ach, bollocks to it!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
They were moving again, down more steps and sloping walkways, towards the Moles. Up close, they were vast. Tall as a building, long as city blocks, with two big digger-arms up front for tunnelling. They were a serious piece of earth-moving hardware. They were also, unfortunately, a bit of a death-trap.
"It means," said Franco, turning suddenly and facing Tarly, "that we're pretty much out of options. If you can think of another way to get to Pippa and shut down this bloody ganger army, then come on, spit it out!"
"Hey! Calm down!"
Franco sighed. Tarly smiled at him, and reached out, and took him in her arms. "What you need, mister, is a bit of good friendly loving."
"Better believe it!"
Tarly kissed him, and Franco was taken by surprise, but he responded, and their tongues entwined. Wow, she can kiss, this lass! She's got a tongue like an electric eel, and hands like Mole diggers!
They snogged, a full-on hardcore snog, and Franco couldn't help himself. He grabbed her arse, and gave it a good ol' big squeeze.
As they broke away, Franco smacked his lips. "You're a chick who knows how to set a man's tonsils on fire! You've got bite, baby! You're a wriggler!"
Tarly paused, lips moving soundlessly. Franco grinned, turned, and stomped down the final set of steps, his sandals slapping onto bare rock. He moved up to one of the Moles and pressed a hand against its cold flank. "Baby!" he muttered.
"Shit," growled Tarly, who for a moment had thought the game was up. She shouted out, "These machines, they've been down here thousands of years. You'll be lucky if this one fires up at all! You'll be lucky if it even moves a paddle!"
Franco wasn't looking. Which was good. Because at that point Tarly's skin started to ripple, to pulse, to show that her flesh was not whole, was not as one, but instead made from snakes and joined, bonded, by strength of will. Tarly Winters was a clone. Not a clone of any particular individual, but a clone of humanity...
Quickly, she gathered herself in unity. She pushed her snake flesh back together again; bonded.
"We'll see, we'll see," muttered Franco, patting the Mole.
He turned, just as her flesh became one. Became human. Tarly gave him a dazzling, beautiful smile.
"We'll see," he grinned.
The T5 jet came in through high cloud cover, dropping sharply with a roar of engines, and Pippa stared out of the window, heart pounding in her chest, and looked down over the vast range of mountains that divided the planet in two, known as The Teeth.
Peaks glittered, black rock beneath snow caps. A hundred mountains flashed beneath them, a thousand mountains, exhilarating and dangerously close.
The Mistress's War City opened up beneath them in a huge clearing on a rocky plateau, and it was vast, and it was terrifying. At the centre stood a huge raised compound - The Mistress's battle HQ. A Monastery, with high fortified walls and Big Guns. There were factories, a hundred at least, all churning out tanks and choppers, guns and jets. There were more Slush Pits like Pippa had seen back on Clone Terra. Only here there were fifty Pits, not one, and Pippa could only imagine how many clones were being churned out as soldiers for this new and terrible invasion. Around the high perimeter fences stomped GASGAMs - fifty, seventy, a hundred - and Pippa's eyes grew wide. The Mistress had not been exaggerating. She had repossessed them all; hijacked their cores, their programming, and bent them to her will.
Pippa observed infantry training. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Clones, but with a difference - for they had been modified, augmented, upgraded using the information supplied by Queen Strogger in the hope of gaining a truce. Instead, she had simply provided a new facet to the upcoming Reality War TV Show about to be aired on Clone TV.
The jet soared down, and turned suddenly vertical, jerking Pippa in her landing straps. It sank slowly to the roof of The Monastery, and Pippa was led down a ramp and outside by Ziggurat and Teddy Sourballs.
A cold, winter wind hit Pippa hard, like a slap in the face.
"This way," the Mistress gestured, almost lazily, back in human form now, but still the images of her snakes haunted Pippa's mind with a shiver. She would never look at the woman - hell, fuck it, at the fucking alien - the same way again.
The Mistress reached the roof barrier of The Monastery. She gazed out, over her armies, over her factories, over her vast War Host. "There!" She pointed.
"Satellites?"
"Broadcast satellites. We're running test signals now, to every single TV set on Cloneworld, and to all our off-world booster cubes. We wouldn't want anybody to miss the biggest show ever made, right?"
"You're going to broadcast throughout Quad-Gal?"
"Of course. Everyone will have the right to see this, the biggest and best, the most original TV Reality Show ever made! Nobody has ever televised war like this before. Nobody has ever made it interactive. Just think, each viewer at home could be personally responsible for shooting that roomful of school children! They can hold an enemy org soldier's fate in their very own hands! Choose whether a ganger org can cut off his enemy's balls or not! Incredible!"
"Awesome!" said Pippa, voice dripping sarcasm.
"Come on! I will show you more!"
Pippa was led (forced!) down a number of ramps and stairs, all metal, leading through the heart of The Monastery. True to form, it was built from stone and contained alien prayer walls and bells. Somehow, though, to Pippa it kind of lost its relevance.
Outside, they climbed into a HJeep. Jets whined, and the Jeep lifted several feet off the ground and accelerated, a cold biting mountain wind ruffling hair as they hummed across the flat rocky parade grounds, down paths from The Monastery HQ to the huge training fields of infantry.
"To give the show originality," explained the Mistress, "we have cloned up battalions of different types of soldier. So there, for example, we have basic landbound grunts from various different nationalities of Quad-Gal. There, we have some standard Mongrel_grade, Simmo_grade and Jappo_grade infantry units. We tend to breed in battalions of a thousand, give or take, depending on defect and re-feed numbers from Pits and Vats. We're finding different properties of the Slush Pits dictate different success rates in the mass cloning."
"Interesting," said Pippa, eyes scanning the fields from the back of the HJeep. "Wait! Stop!"
"Yes?"
The HJeep hummed to a halt, bobbing for a moment, and Pippa stood up and stared. She stared again. She stared a little harder. "Holy Mother of God," she said, "tell me my eyes are deceiving me!"
"No. What you see is true."
"It cannot be!"
"Oh, it is," chuckled the Mistress.
There, before their watching eyes,
all stood to attention, with a Battle Sergeant screaming orders as they ran through drills, were a thousand Franco Haggises!
Each Franco Haggis was short, a little pot-bellied, with a shaved head and ginger goatee beard. However, whilst Pippa acknowledge her original Franco Haggis was, if one was truthful about the whole situation, something of a slob, here and now this battalion of Francos were smart, uniformed; their boots shone, their beards were combed, no horseradish stains marred their jackets, and their eyes shone with pride as they were drilled around the huge parade square with precision, and with none of the sloppiness Pippa had grown to love and loathe.
A stomp of a thousand boots, in perfect harmony, rattled across the parade ground.
"I don't fucking believe it!" said Pippa.
"Synthetic testing and probability controls show the Franco_grade infantry grunt is a very good infantry soldier indeed. He may be short and fat, but what he lacks in height and suppleness he clearly makes up for in raw aggression and lack of cowardice on the battlefield. This battalion is a miracle."
"It's a fucking abomination, is what it is!"
"We'll see how successful my predications are when the cameras start to roll."
"Mistress, you're a sick, sick lady, is all I can say. You've bred a thousand sexual perverts! You've bred a thousand versions of a known psychopathic lunatic! How could you do that? Did you think it all the way though, eh?"
"My choices will be vindicated," said the Mistress, smugly. She made a gesture, and the HJeep moved on. Pippa buried her head in her hands. Oh, no. Oh, no. How can it be? Not one Franco, but a thousand of them! What's she going to show me next? A thousand Ronan Keatings? A thousand bloody Doctor Whos? A thousand Schwarzeneggar_grade soldiers? Shit. It'll be a damn miracle if I don't go insane!
They sped off, and the Mistress showed Pippa the full circuit of her vast War Host before returning to The Monastery, where she was taken up a wide set of bare stone steps to a large room, filled wall-to-wall with advanced military hardware, all marked with the QGM logo. Military grade computers. Stolen! Nicked! For Pippa to work on. She sighed.
Ziggurat moved over and removed his clothes. The little hunchback sat on a simple wooden chair and regarded Pippa with his odd eyes, smiling.
The Mistress stood before Pippa. She held out the 3Core, which Pippa took, almost reverently. Here could be their answer to the junks, and the sweeping Quad-Gal invasion...
If she could just get it away from the hands of this mad, media-obsessed, multi-snake alien!
"One mistake, any attempt to escape, anything," said the Mistress, "and Ziggurat here will fry you. And not just a tickle like the last time. This time he'll burn you to coal. Understand?"
"Yes."
"You'll find the codes on the desktop. In the folder called Codes."
"How original."
"I want the 3Core unlocking. It will then control the modified GASGAM rockets. You understand?"
"I'll find my way round it," said Pippa, and watched the Mistress leave.
So, she wants me to program the GASGAM to take off and deliver nukes to every org city and war factory on the continent at her command? Well, I'll program them all right. I'll fucking program them good...
Pippa removed her thin leather gloves, plugged the 3Core into the console, took hold of the mouse and clicked Open.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MOLE HOLE
They stood in the cockpit. Around them, Tarly felt the whole planet pressing in, pressing down, focusing its hatred at what was about to happen. A burrowing machine capable of going through mountains; an engine capable of travelling through the core of the world. This was not just a train built for tunneling, a small tool in the great terraforming canon of available weapons; it was something which could, possibly, undermine an entire planet.
They opened a door, which disengaged and slid open with a gentle hiss. Franco led the way into what could only be described as a train carriage, closely followed by Tarly, Strogger and Anklebolt. Just before the door closed on its thick iron-black hinges, Polly the Parrot nipped in, with a strangled "squawk."
They moved through a tight underlit central corridor. To each side were sleeping compartments and store rooms. The Mole was designed to run underground, completely self-sufficient, for very long periods of time.
The cab up front had tinted windows. It had a small air freshener in the shape of a spaceship dangling from a rear-view monitor. Franco stood staring at the lifeless black controls. Each button looked like a blank eye to Tarly as she also glanced down, then back to Anklebolt. Polly had, thankfully, followed them to the cab and hopped up onto Queen Strogger's shoulder. The mad old org seemed not to mind. Franco scowled at the bird, mouthing silent obscenities.
"Alice?" he said.
"Yes?" said Alice, her voice dreamy from the small black BCube.
"Are you okay?"
"I feel... distant. Lost, almost."
"Hmm. Can you locate Pippa? Using her spinal logic cube implants?"
"I will try. For now, head west, then we'll update co-ordinates when I can pinpoint her."
Franco nodded, and rested his hands on the controls. "Okay," he said, "here goes nuffink!"
Franco might have been a shaven-headed, goatee-bearded, pot-bellied, psychopathic, nutjob fucknugget, but he was also a great sniper, a brilliantly deviant demolition's expert, and had an amazing affinity with machines. Many was the time Keenan had kicked him up the arse for tinkering with his Permatex WarSuit with a Phillips screwdriver. Many was the time Pippa had scolded him with violent expletives as he rose from a Hornet's EngineBay carrying a bag of spanners.
Franco and machines - they just got on.
Whereas Franco and people - they just had to agree to disagree.
Franco worked out the controls intuitively, and hit three buttons. The Mole's atomic reactor came back online, with a deep and distant rumble. Digits and bars flickered up on the HUD. Outside, the world looked very black.
"Ooh, there's power in this baby," said Franco, licking his lips.
"It isn't a racing car," snapped Tarly.
"Nooo, but it's all about the driver, reet, and not the vehicle. I mean, take your average woman driver..."
"Yes?" Tarly's voice was cold.
"Well, well, you see..." Franco's eyes glazed over as he saw the look on his beloved's face. "What is it?"
"Don't be giving me your women are bad drivers bullshit, or I'll kick you outside and stick this whole Mole up your arse."
"Hey, I was just saying..." whined Franco.
"Just drive!"
"Okay, okay, hey, I'm not the kind of driver who crashes into skips and supermarket shopping trolleys, though, am I?" He engaged the iDrive with a clunk and, grabbing a control throttle, eased the Mole forward. It trundled through the darkness with a dull roar and a whine of suppressed rage. Franco hit another button, and dazzling lights blazed from the Mole's snout, and Franco grabbed another lever and engaged the iDiggers. To each side, the paddles shifted and stretched forward with tiny clicks and clanks, and scoops and blades could be seen. They started to spin and gyrate, hypnotic in their implied violence.
"This is going to be fun," said Franco, and accelerated slightly, heading for the wall. Around them, machinery flashed past.
"If it doesn't work, or you screw it up, we're dead," said Tarly, fingers clutching the arm-rests of her chair.
"Ach, don't be such a pussy!"
They hit the wall, and the Mole's arms and scoops, blades and chewers ground into the rock and... they flashed into a tunnel. Darkness closed in. The Mole vibrated; rock-debris passed through an under-carriage chute to be spat out of the Mole's arse.
Lights illuminated a mash of churning.
Franco released his breath, and settled back. "See? I told ya it'd work!"
"Ha! You're a good bluffer, Franco Haggis."
"Hey, they don't call me Franco 'Cool Cucumber' Haggis for nowt, y'know? I'm a geezer. Part of the Smart Party!"
"Squa
wk! You're a lunatic, is what you are, buster!" squawked Polly.
Franco threw his robotic Special Friend an evil glare, gauging the distance between her alloy head and his right hook. Then he settled back a bit more and glanced at Queen Strogger and Princess Anklebolt III.
"You two not kissed and made up yet?"
"I would rather die!" sniffed Anklebolt imperiously, tilting her nose up. Which was quite something for a woman with a face like a bucket of bolts.
"That can be arranged, bastad," snapped Strogger.
"Oh mother, you were always such a bad-tempered bully!"
"Bully? You were going to bloody hang me! Me! You're good ol' mom!"
"The only good thing you ever did was set fire to the palace - with you in it."
"Hey, that was an accident with the chip pan!"
"Maybe if you spent less time frying chips and more time spending quality moments with your offspring..."
"Quality moments! There were bloody five hundred and thirty three of you, you little bunch of scrotes! Never a moment's peace! It was like giving birth to an alien fucking zoo!"
"Well, you should have learnt to keep your legs shut."
"You should have learnt to keep your mouth shut!"
"I only kept my mouth as shut as you kept your saggy, machine-fed pussy!"
"How dare you!"
"I dare, because I..."
Tarly pulled Franco to one side. "This thing has an automatic pilot, y'know?"
"What, the Mole?"
"Yeah, the Mole."
"So?"
"It means you don't have to man the controls. Not for a while, anyway."
"Yes."
"So."
"Yup." Franco scratched his beard.
"So... we could, you know, go for a little walk."
"Indeed we could."
"Or something."
"What kind of something?"
"You know." She winked and reached around, squeezing his bum. "Something."
"Oh! Ah! Ah! I see. Really? Now?"
"Yes. Really. Now."
"Lead the way!"
"I shall."