Cloneworld - 04

by Andy Remic

  It would be the best Reality TV show ever made.

  She would be a goddess of the media galaxy!

  The Mistress would, effectively, rule the Quad-Gal's entire media network!

  The Q-Wing Fast Jets howled overhead, guns thundering, a manic-faced Franco in the lead fighter. Guns yammered and howled. Flak Cannons pumped thousands of shells into the speeding Fast Jets. The sky was a flickering haze of shrapnel and fire. Smoke billowed. Ships detonated. The War Balloon shook with multiple impacts... but it was no good. The War Balloon absorbed everything thrown at it. The War Balloon was indestructible.

  In the air, Franco was fighting with the controls of his own Q-Wing Fast Jet. "God, this is an awkward bugger to control," he snapped, chewing his own teeth as he brought them around for another attack. Below, Pippa's squadron raked fire across the War Balloon as, below them, the Org Palace swung into view, at the heart of Org itself...

  They had minutes!

  Minutes before the Disintegrator did its evil work.

  "Franco? It's no good! The War Balloon's too strong!"

  "We need to take out the command bridge," snapped Franco. "Listen. You cut across the axis and try and draw their fire. I'm going in."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I've got a bone to pick with this fucking Mistress," snarled Franco.

  "Pink Squadron! To me!" said Pippa over the comms, and their ships lifted, slamming vertically towards the sun before sweeping around in a wide arc. "You've got one chance, Franco," muttered Pippa, but in her heart of hearts she knew, knew he'd never be able to pull it off. No pilot was that good. Or that lucky. It was a million-to-one chance...

  Franco's Q-Wing Fast Jet came thundering around, Flak slamming along one flank and then powering off into nothing. Franco's squadron was close behind. He'd lost a few jets, but all in all they were still tight, still a unit...

  "Listen up," growled Franco to his team. "This is what I'm going to do."

  He explained.

  They listened.

  "That's impossible," said one Franco.

  "If you've got a better idea...?"

  "Well, bozo, it's your bloody neck you'll snap!"

  "Then so be it!" snarled Franco. "Come on! Let's do it!"

  Engines screaming, his two hundred Q-Wing Fast Jets came around on a wide trajectory and accelerated directly at the War Balloon...

  The Mistress grabbed Teddy Sourballs by the throat. "They're going to fuck it all up!" she screamed. "Get yourself out there, lead a squadron of Q-Wing Fast Jets and engage them ship-to-ship!"

  "What?" snapped Sourballs, her barbed-wire hair bobbing, eyes suddenly wide. She was an English teacher, not a damn fighter pilot!

  "You heard me!" growled The Boss. "Do it! Now! Before I pull your bowels out through your stupid, flapping mouth!" The Mistress's face exploded into a shower of wavering snakes. Teddy Sourballs stared at her illustrious leader, her own mouth opening and closing as the Mistress's whole head became a wavering mass of slithering, wavering snakes. Like a pumped-up, drugged-up Medusa in tentacle-ridden overdrive. A Medusa whose snakes had usurped her face.

  Teddy nodded, and rushed to the rear of the War Balloon's deck, shouting commands and waving her arms manically. Twenty clones joined her, and they climbed into Q-Wing Fast Jets and, engines howling, hammered from the relative safety of the War Balloon's decks.

  Immediately, guns were thundering. The Jets spiralled between Pippa's squadron and the sky was filled with a chaos of fire and bullets.

  In her cockpit, Teddy Sourballs was muttering, face a screwed up scowl, eyes narrowed, hands gripping the control stick tightly. Send me out on a fool's errand, would you? Send me out on a damn suicide mission, would you? You're insane! You've let it go to your head! You call yourself the Mistress, the bloody Head Mistress, but what a lot of horse shit that really is! You think you're in Total Control! You think you're a Goddess! But you're not. You're an alien. And you hate the gangers as much as you hate the orgs - and all life that is not of your own species.

  Guns thundered. Bullets thudded up the cockpit's side, making Teddy flinch.

  What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? I'm a long way from home. I'm a long way from sanity. I'm a long way from what I used to be... what happened to me? What happened to reality?

  She gazed around. Hundreds of ships flew around her, guns blazing. Missiles fired, gleaming in the sunshine, to stream off after their targets.

  Teddy seemed to dance a random, crazy path through their midst.

  She was untouchable.

  Immortal!

  She laughed, a crazy laugh, high-pitched and whining.

  I am no longer your slave, Mistress! You no longer command me, you no longer control me! I'm a free agent! As far as I care, you can stick your own stupid head right up your own fat arse and chew your own liver!

  Suddenly, the Q-Wing Fast Jet veered left, dipping towards the city of Org far below. She glimpsed the War Balloon in her monitors, with the blue glow of the massive Disintegrator at its nose.

  Teddy Sourballs laughed, a crazy laugh, and her hands were tight on the controls.

  I'll show you who's the real Mistress around here!

  "Squawk!"

  "Do that at the wrong moment, muppet, and we'll both end up fried chicken meat!" snapped Franco. His hands were tight on controls. He held the Q-Wing Fast Jet steady.

  "You're insane!" squawked Polly into her microphone.

  "Shut up."

  "You're mad as a rabid butcher's dog!"

  "Shut up."

  "You'll get us both killed and strung out!"

  "Better that, than the entire city destroyed."

  "Wanna bet, squawk?"

  The Q-Wing Fast Jet came in fast, its entourage of Franco-piloted jets in a streaming V to either side, protecting Franco's craft with heavy duty firepower as he came around and slammed with a boost towards the War Balloon itself...

  Aboard the War Balloon, General Banks took a Flak Cannon in his own gloved hands and fired at the enemy craft, squeezing the trigger over and over. Q-Wing Fast Jets were slammed away in balls of glowing flame to either side of Franco, but still he came on, faster and faster and faster...

  "The force is strong in this one," muttered General Banks, before giving a short, sharp scream and running away from the Flak Cannon, his arms curled protectively about his head. He now understood what the mad ginger squaddie was about to do...

  It was a suicide mission.

  The Q-Wing Fast Jets accompanying Franco peeled away in neat, tight arcs at the very last moment, guns still pounding, bullets and rockets strafing the War Balloon. But not Franco.

  His head was lowered, eyes narrowed, and he came on strong...

  General Banks sprinted past the Mistress.

  "What are you doing?" she snapped, and he gestured vaguely behind him as he legged it for cover.

  The Mistress turned, peering down the long flat decks of the War Balloon, past computer consoles, parked fighters and HTanks and HJeeps, and a thousand soldiers all standing at attention in straight defensive ranks, MPK machine guns at the ready.

  "No!" she said in disbelief, face and head snakes wriggling. "It cannot be!"

  Behind her, the Disintegrator started to vibrate. Huge blue pulses were emanating from the orb and the viral stacks. The humming of constrained, contained energy had grown exponentially until it was hurting the eardrums of every clone ganger aboard...

  "It needs to be fired! Unleashed! Now!" screamed General Banks, from where he cowered behind an alloy bulkhead... but at that moment there was a titanic crash as Franco's Q-Wing Fast Jet hit the deck, ploughing into and through ten HJeeps in a massive shower of sparks and crunches, and the screaming stressed sounds of compressing, twisting metal. The Q-Wing Fast Jet turned as it slid, tearing down the War Balloon's deck and ploughing through a scatter of infantry who, still turning to run, were tossed aside like broken skittles. The Jet spun fast, slamming more HJeeps outwards as if slapped by the
Hand of God. Its wings were torn free with banshee shrieks, and yet still it ploughed on, towards...

  The HTanks.

  "Ha!" snapped the Mistress, and put her hands on her hips. "You crazy fool! Let's see you go through those!"

  The Q-Wing Fast Jet would detonate for sure.

  Franco, hands juddering on the control stick - which no longer controlled anything - watched several platoons of ganger infantry squelch and break as they were tossed upwards and backwards, over his blood-smeared, flesh-drizzled cockpit.

  "Squawk! What now, idiot? If you hit those tanks you'll be squashed like a bug under boot!"

  This is it, certain death! Unless...

  The HTanks loomed like some big-ass baddy in a terrifying computer simulation. The parrot was right. Nothing was ploughing through the HTanks. In fact, the HTanks would absorb him, explode him, spit him out more readily than any machine-god planet core...

  "Aiieee!" screamed Franco, thumping the [eject].

  There came a clunk. A hiss.

  And Franco was [ejected].

  With a short sharp scream, Franco was fired vertically from the cockpit of the Q-Wing Fast Jet. The Jet spun again and connected with five HTanks, which exploded in a blossoming fist of raging blue fire and energy. Franco was hurled upwards, the roaring ball of fire tickling his arse until, with a soft whump, he was absorbed, like so many bullets and missiles before him, into the liquid metal of the War Balloon's balloon.

  Everything was silent.

  Everything was silver.

  Franco spun like a top, arms and legs akimbo, his world engulfed by the silver mucus of the balloon. Slowly, the energy of his violent [ejection] was absorbed, and his spinning slowed. Then he realised with horror that he -

  Could. Not. Breathe...

  Franco started to swim, started to swim fast, but the mucus was far thicker than water and the horror and stupidity of his miscalculation suddenly struck Franco like a brick. It had been a simple plan. It had been a good plan. Plough the Q-Wing Fast Jet onto the deck of the War Balloon and, if the shit hit the fan, eject into the liquid membrane of the balloon itself -

  Only. Only now he had no point of reference.

  He couldn't breathe.

  And he didn't know which way was out...

  Franco struck out strongly, muscles burning, screaming at him, his sight and every other sense lost to the thick silver fluid engulfing him. His mouth was tight shut, nostrils quivering as the thick shit tried its best to invade his skull...

  Bright stars began to flutter like flutterbugs in his brain.

  He was fast running out of oxygen.

  He was going to die.

  Damn and bloody bollocks! To die like this! What a ridiculous way to go! What a stupid way to die! I thought I would go in a firefight, machine gun juddering in my sweaty fists, or grappling with big fat muscly men in vests, or away on some foreign battlefield with a Babe in my skull! Not here, like this, drowning in anti-grav piss!

  And the Mistress, damn her! She will have won!

  She'll disintegrate the Org Palace, then the city, then the whole fucking country!

  Oh, the shame!

  Franco spurted a bubble, which floated away.

  Then another.

  He swam on in panic, chest burning, muscles screaming, and just as he thought - he knew - he was about to suck in huge lungfuls of liquid anti-grav War Balloon balloon matter, he felt a stab against his right hand.

  His flapped his hand in pain...

  There came another stab.

  He flapped his hand again! Gerroff...

  Then something tiny, like a pincer, took his finger and pulled. And in Franco's oxygen-dwindling brain he realised something was trying to help him, to guide him... He swam in the direction of the pull, in which he was being drawn, and more stars were fluttering until -

  There came a slow, languorous pop.

  Like a greased baby eagerly ejected from his panting mother's womb, Franco slid from the balloon, covered in a thick silver membrane, and hit the deck with a useless slap. He sucked in great lungfuls of air, and opened his trembling eyes, reaching up to scrape the silver liquid out of his eyes.

  Above him, there came a second pop and his saviour was revealed. It was Polly the Parrot, [ejected] a few moments after Franco from the crashing Fast Jet. It was his Special Friend. His Special Friend who had saved him, guiding him to safety with the tip of her metal beak.

  Franco groaned.

  Oh no!

  Not again!

  He sat up, as a hundred gangers surrounded him. They pointed MPKs at him, snarling, and Franco slowly climbed to his feet, crippled by the liquid anti-grav matter. "This shit is worse than treacle," he muttered.

  "You there! Haggis!"

  The Mistress was marching towards him, her face gone, a hundred snakes waving and spitting venom. Franco put his hands on his hips, a snarl on his face, and spat out a long quivering gloob of spittle.

  "Yeah, bitch?"

  "How... how... how dare you! I am the Queen of the Gangers! I am their Goddess! Their Mistress! I am about to destroy their enemies! Look!" And she pointed, to where the Disintegrator was practically dancing against its restraints. It was so filled with energy, with charge, that it looked pretty much ready to burst.

  "You dumb-ass point is, venom-tits?"

  The Mistress pointed to the clones, then to Franco, snake-hands trembling with suppressed rage and a need to strangle the little ginger bastard. "Kill him," she said. "Do it. Do it now..."

  Teddy Sourballs lowered her head, and accelerated, and behind her, her faithful squadron of gangers followed in close formation. She realised, in a moment of clarity, that this thing had to end. They had allowed the Head Mistress to rule them for too long - from School to Politics to Media to Global Domination. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, guaranteed, and the Mistress had wielded way too much power for way too long. So much power, she even believed her self-created legend.

  You think us gangers have no pride?

  You think we're just slaves to your fucking entertainment? To your Rule? Your Dominion? To your impending Quad-Gal Empire?

  The gangers are nobody's slaves.

  It crept up on us.

  Like a bad dream.

  But now.

  Now, we're going to change that.

  "General Banks?"

  "Yes, Ms Sourballs?"

  "Send out the message."

  "Yes, Ms Sourballs."

  Franco stared at the clones with a snarl in his beard. "Come on then, fuckers, one at a time or all at once, it's all the same to me!" He lunged, kicked one ganger in the balls, punched another across the jaw, breaking it, then took an MPK from a pair of stunned hands. He whipped the gun barrel around to face the Mistress's wavering snake-head.

  "Anybody moves and I'll blow her, er, snakes clean off!"

  Nobody moved.

  The Mistress began to chuckle, a weird hissing, chuckling, gurgling sound, as if a hundred tiny snakes were making the noise; which, of course, they were. Suddenly, a huge snake head erupted from the centre of the Mistress's neck stump and, with a single, terrifying bite, chomped the MPK in half.

  Franco took several steps back.

  Behind him, the gangers likewise took several steps back.

  The snake roared, and it was as thick as a human carcass, skin pale white like the bulging, rotten intestine of a disembowelled corpse. Maggot flesh gleamed. Black eyes stared hard at Franco - and at the thousand clone soldiers who, as one and without order, turned their guns from Franco and towards the Mistress.

  Franco backed away further.

  He sensed, somehow, that she was now the Common Enemy.

  It's not every day your War Leader turns into a big snake.

  "You fools!" hissed the snake, tongue flickering so fast it was a blur. The Mistress's legs staggered a little, as if struggling to hold the vast weight of the huge beast within. Around the thick scaled head, smaller snakes wavered constantly, like a hundred stalks o
f AI spaghetti biowire. "You think any of you can stand in the way of my Quad-Gal domination? Fools!"

  Franco stared down at his half-chewed MPK, and dropped it with a clatter. He pulled free one of his faithful Kekra quad-barrel machine pistols and pointed it at the big snake.

  "What you gonna do? TV everyone to death?"

  "When you control the media, you control the Empire," said the Mistress and opened her mouth, opened it wide, slick skin spreading back over pale white jaws until only yellowish fangs could be seen - and then, from this huge orifice, poured snakes, hundreds and hundreds of white snakes, which hissed and slithered, rearing up to attack the clones...

  The gangers yelled in sudden panic, turning to run. Bullets whine and slapped. Snakes struck out, biting, injecting venom...

  A snake reared at Franco. He yelped, and shot its head off in a slurry of pulped snake-meat. More snakes flowed past, heads darting out to strike the clones. The poison was fast-acting, and many were dead before they hit the deck.

  Suddenly everything was a crawling, slithering, bullet-yammering chaos. Franco's guns boomed and clattered, and he danced sideways, yelping, watching blasted snake heads go slithering across the deck. He suddenly realised what was happening: a diversion.

  He glanced up. The Mistress, with her huge, thick, pulsing snake head, was walking unsteadily towards the Disruptor. It was ready to fire; damn, it looked like it was ready to ejaculate! And it'd take out the entire Org Palace in one blast! Strogger's entire family! Then, the city beyond... and who knew where it would stop? Neither the Disruptor, nor the Mistress, would stop until Cloneworld was a barren wasteland. What did she have to lose? She'd got her Live TV programme. And she'd massacred the Orgs...