Cloneworld - 04

by Andy Remic

  Franco growled and started after her.

  Five snakes reared up before him, slinking out from beneath an overturned HJeep, heads snapping, jaws clacking, poison spitting. He fired with a yell, bullets whining, churning through snake flesh. The Mistress glanced back, but then she was there, at the huge weapon. Blue light danced in her black snake eyes. It reflected eerily from her slick, pale skin.

  She reached out, just as Franco's last Kekra bullet removed the head of the fifth snake in a messy pasta splatter, and he yelled, "Noooo!" But she was there, and the distance was too great.

  He tried anyway.

  Sprinted with all his might...

  "Pink Leader, do you copy?"

  "Copy you, Silver Leader."

  "How's Franco doing, over?"

  Pippa slammed around in the Q-Wing Fast Jet but, at this speed and distance, the decks were just a blur. And then she saw... them: enemy Jets coming popping up out of nowhere. She armed her guns and gritted her teeth, but a little voice inside her head saw their trajectory, saw the pulsing blue glow of the Disintegrator - and she gasped in realisation and pulled up at the last moment, guns silent.

  Teddy Sourballs ploughed her Q-Wing Fast Jet straight into the heart of the weapon. There came a hiatus of total silence, then a sudden explosion of blue light and a deafening boom that sent every Q-Wing Fast Jet in a two-klick radius spinning uselessly through the skies. Pippa grabbed her control stick, wrestling with the stalled Jet as the pulse kicked her up and away from the War Balloon and the centre of battle. Panic rose suddenly in her chest. Around her, every other Q-Wing Fast Jet was suffering the same fate, describing a high arc until, as one, they started to fall from the skies like a squadron of detonated birds...

  "You want another cup of tea, motherfucker?" screamed Teddy Sourballs, as her Jet ploughed into the Disintegrator. "Well fucking sip on this!" and there was a deafening roar that ate through her, and consumed her in totality, and as she was blasted into a billion atoms of oblivion by raging blue fire, Teddy Sourballs died with a smile on her face. Now that taught her a lesson...

  One second, Franco was reaching out to grapple with the distant figure of the Mistress. The next, a Q-Wing Fast Jet appeared in the heart of the Disintegrator and Franco knew, fucking knew bad shit when bad shit was going down, and he hit the deck hard and fast, rolling towards a HJeep as a roar blasted across the War Balloon like a nuclear detonation, and blue light pulsed and raged, and the wind was a firestorm of hot ash and metal splinters. The War Balloon rocked and swayed like a tree in a twister. Franco covered his head and closed his eyes, but then thought, that's the way dumb bastards die, so he crawled beneath the HJeep as, above and around him, clones were torn off their feet, screaming, smashing along the decks like tumbling dolls to be spat out the rear deck like bomb-blasted confetti. HTanks were rocking in the shockwave, and a HJeep to Franco's left was picked up and thrown down the decks, crashing and smashing into other vehicles and stranded clones as it went.

  Through the raging wind Franco stared at the Disintegrator. It was gone, as was the Q-Wing Fast Jet which had hit it. But the Mistress was still there - just.

  She was no longer a body, just a thousand long, wavering strands of flesh, not even recognisable as snakes. It was like an unravelling of intestine. It was spaghetti gone sour. It was a squid put through a squid-mincer. And it was hanging onto the detonated Disintegrator as all around it the world roared...

  Slowly, determinedly, Franco started to crawl across the deck of the War Balloon.

  Got to stop it, he thought.

  Got to kill it!

  How could it survive that blast?

  And how the hell was the War Balloon still flying?

  His answer was soon answered.

  The War Balloon wasn't...

  There came more terrible roars, like secondary detonations. The War Balloon slowly, gradually tilted, until its nose faced the ground far below, and they were almost, almost vertical. Still the wind and blue fire from the Disintegrator rolled along the deck - from front to back. And as Franco looked up, he saw the problem immediately...

  It was melting the balloon's anti-grav matter.

  The balloon was gradually losing the one thing that kept it airborne.

  "Why's it always me, eh?" muttered Franco, and continued crawling along the deck towards the remains, the still-living remains, of the Mistress, who was herself clinging onto the weapon console and reaching for -

  The GASGAM nukes.

  Franco groaned.

  "What!" he screamed down the deck. The Mistress seemed to shudder. "Haven't you had enough? Isn't it enough that you're a pile of fucking torn-up tagliatelle? What more do you want? Carbonara sauce and a Caesar side-salad?"

  Franco commando-crawled -

  Then threw himself left, as a HJeep was picked up and bounced along the deck towards him. He rolled around, hands covering his head, as it left a three foot gash beside his quivering body and bounced off along the tilting deck to disappear, sweeping hapless clones off the deck with it.

  On, Franco crawled.

  Onwards, towards the Mistress.

  Onwards, towards his bitter enemy...

  And he realised. Hey! The crawling's getting easier! At last! A positive bloody result! At last! Some beady-eyed god up there is trying to give old Franco a bit of a helping hand, a bit of lee-way, a bit of a hitch up the old ladder of positive progress...

  Until he realised.

  He was crawling faster, because the War Balloon was falling.

  Franco peered up, and peered down, and saw the capital city of Org getting gradually bigger down below. There, he could see the docks, where the friendly party led by Anklebolt III had brought him in after his adventures with the org pirates. There were the narrow streets, surrounded by thousands of needle-like steel towers, through which he'd been transported in a bar-walled prison truck. And there was the Org Palace - seat of power for the pretty much crazy-as-a-rabid-dog Queen Strogger and her weird and twisted offspring.

  Franco eyed the steel towers getting closer, and closer, and closer...

  Aah, he thought. Aah. Shit. That looks pretty bad. That looks like maniac shit. That looks like a whole universe of fucknuggets...

  Daggers.

  That's what they look like!

  We're falling towards a thousand skyscraper-sized daggers...

  Suddenly, Franco had less desire to kill the Mistress in her current tangled, distressed confetti format, and more desire to get off the damn War Balloon.

  He forced his head right, and could see the barrier. He crawled along, past several struggling snakes also fighting to get... somewhere. Where? Back to their Mistress? Franco reached out, grabbed one, and with a hiss sent it spinning off in the raging hot wind. Blue flames ignited the snake, and at least Franco got a little satisfaction from watching the evil little bastard burn.

  Come on, Haggis! Move your sorry ass!

  He struggled towards the edge of the barrier and gripped it, and forced himself into a diagonal half-stance. There was a clack as Polly the Parrot landed next to him. She looked a little battered, and traces of balloon anti-grav matter still clung to her alloy feathers.

  "Squawk! Well then, buster?" said the parrot.

  "Can - you - contact - Pippa?" forced Franco from between gritted teeth.

  "Squawk! Sorry. My comms are all shot to shit. You're on your own, buster!"

  "Why? Where you going?"

  "I'm bailing out, buster! When this baby crashes, it's going to take a quarter of the damn city with it! Have you ever seen anti-grav nitrex matter when it goes up? Kaboom!"

  "Kaboom?" repeated Franco, staring hard at the parrot. "What the fuck am I supposed to do?"

  "Can't help you there, buster! Sorreee."

  "Hey, I thought you were my Special friend? This little special friend will be your friend. A friend for life! That's what you said! 'As you read this, a genetic sample has been taken from your fingertips and relayed digitally to the DumbMutt'
s brain. He is now yours. He will never leave your side. He 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.' You hear that? Words like, 'never leave your side' and 'a friend for life.' That's what you said, you traitorous, back-stabbing little bag of alloy shite!"

  The parrot shrugged. "Hey. Times is hard, my man! Squawk! This one, you gotta solve yourself..."

  And then Polly was gone. Franco waved his fist.

  "Some damn bloody Special Friend you turned out to be!" he screamed into the raging hot wind, mixing now with the swirling cold uplift from the War Balloon's downward acceleration.

  Maybe there's some control left? he thought, manically, self-preservation kicking him in the balls.

  Franco Haggis struggled onwards, fighting his way past more rattling HJeeps and several clones, still hanging on for dear life. One by one, he watched them picked up and sent plummeting and spinning away.

  He glanced up.

  He was only metres from the tangled mess that was the Mistress. She was making a sound, Franco suddenly realised. A hissing sound. And with a grim scowl, he realised she was laughing. The tangled mess of massacred snake meat was laughing at him...

  Franco scowled, and reached up, dragging himself up to the blackened, blasted control panel. He slapped at it ineffectually. It was dead. Deader than a dead dodo.

  "Damn and bloody bollocks!"

  "To think it would come to this," said the Mistress.

  "What's that?"

  "You got the 3Core. You stopped the war! But you'll never live to see any of the benefits! If the 3Core works - which it won't, because you don't know the special unlocking codes - if it works and the junks are pacified, their invasion halted, a better Quad-Gal for everybody... well, you'll still be dead, and buried in a pit with me for all eternity!" Her laughter rolled out, and Franco squinted, trying to see where she was laughing from so he'd know where to shove the next Babe grenade.

  "Aah, get to fuck," said Franco. "At least if I die, I'll know you're dead too. So bring it on, that's what I say! I no longer give a shit!"

  "But of course you do." And her voice was perfectly calm.

  "You know the unlocking codes?" said Franco, anger dissipating.

  "Yes."

  "What are they?"

  "They are my very genetics, Franco Haggis. You need a sample of my DNA to get the 3Core to work. Don't you understand? I was the junk's mainframe - their biocomputer. A living, breathing machine. But I am so old, Franco Haggis. So terribly old and bored. The junks have come back, but the 3Core will stop them. If only you could live, to tell QGM how to cure them. How to use the 3Core! How to use my flesh and soul!"

  "Too weird," said Franco.

  "But you understand?"

  "I understand."

  Franco glanced to the right. The taller org towers were coming into view, and Franco winced. They were going to impact with the ground - really soon, and really fucking hard. There was no way he could survive. No way at all.

  Have I had a good life? he thought.

  Have I been a good person?

  Well. You've done some bad things. You've killed some people. But in your heart, in your soul, you always tried to do what was right. Okay, so a lot of it was right for your own personal gratification, but deep down, deep down in the very core of your being, you are a Good Man. You have Heart. You have Courage. You have Spunk. And you have... Humanity.

  Tears were rolling down Franco's cheeks. Through his beard.

  I have Humanity, he thought.

  Pippa wrestled with the controls of the Q-Wing Fast Jet, and like so many of her flying companions, thought she was going to die. She kept frantically stabbing at the starter, and as the ground rushed towards her a scream started to well in her throat... just as the engine whined, and burst into life and power. Pippa wrenched back on the control stick, and around her hundreds did the same, and the Q-Wing Fast Jets arced hard, spent exhaust fuel leaving cloud trails through the narrow city streets of Org... then up, up, up in crystal blue skies...

  Franco!

  Pippa wrenched on the controls, and saw the War Balloon in its long, almost painfully slow dive towards the city as anti-grav matter fought the planet, rumbling so deeply it made the very streets tremble.

  Pippa slammed the Fast Jet around in a huge arc, and powered towards the War Balloon. If she could just get alongside the falling War Balloon! Make a grab for Franco Haggis! But she realised, suddenly, and with a dry bitter mouth, that rescuing Franco would be an impossibility. She would be too late.

  Come on, soldier! Never give up!

  She tore along, riding the waves of energy still pulsing from the dying Disintegrator. The Q-Wing Fast Jet wobbled and screamed, wings rattling in the wild turbulence.

  Come on, come on, come on...

  Keenan was dead. She couldn't let it happen again, couldn't let her one final link, her one last friend die like this...

  If Franco jumped, she could use a wide-angle field net, she reasoned.

  She could fire it! Catch him!

  Pluck him from the sky like a stone caught by a child...

  Pippa blinked, and eased back on her control stick.

  It was too late.

  With bitterness like acid in her mouth, Pippa turned her head - as the War Balloon impacted with the ground. It seemed to slowly fold in upon itself, compressing like a skyscraper, collapsing in slow motion, folds of silver billowing and collapsing like a metal blanket allowed to carelessly fall. And then the explosion slammed out in an expanding fireball of bright bright blue energy that left Pippa fighting the controls of the Q-Wing Fast Jet again, tears pouring down her cheeks, and she sent the Jet scurrying around in a wide arc, away from the awesome blast zone...

  Pippa hovered the Jet, but did not watch. She could not.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Pippa wept for a man she loved, a friend, a companion, a brother, and a sexual athlete.

  Franco had been on that War Balloon.

  There was no way he could have escaped.

  Pippa acknowledged the tragedy with a deep and hateful bitterness.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  AFTERMATH

  Pippa dressed in silence, in a long, flowing red silk dress. She tied back her dark hair, which shone with honey and oils, and smiled her thanks at the woman who'd attended on her as she'd bathed in a large, scented pool scattered with flower petals. The woman departed, and Pippa walked slowly in bare feet to the high windows. She opened them with pale, tapered fingers, and a cool breeze washed in from the city of Org below.

  Her nostrils twitched at the familiar scents of the city: machine oil, hot metal, fried fish. She glanced right, to where the Org Palace stood, gleaming, on the opposing hill, and she could make out the fluttering of bunting and flags, and hear squawking, rasping, org Metalliano music; all the marks of joy, celebration, happiness.

  This was the Day of Truce.

  Pippa was invited to the party.

  She slowly closed the high apartment windows and moved back to the huge bed. It was massive, to accommodate augmented org guests, and dressed with crisp white sheets. One thing Pippa had to admit - the orgs were hard workers, and there wasn't one element of her royal pampering that had been overlooked.

  Long gauze curtains hung from ceiling to floor, diffusing the bright, low-slung winter sun. Pippa lay back on the bed with a groan, resting her aching, battered limbs.

  It had been three days since... since the crash.

  Her body was still a battered sack of shit, a skin-bag full of crushed marbles.

  "Music. Classical. Old Earth Symphony."

  Violins soothed her, and she reached out, took a sip of honeyed wine, and sank back to the folds of the supremely comfortable bed. Gods, it had been a long week. And an even longer life.

  She was almost asleep, a doze of exhaustion, of regeneration
, when she realised another person was present in the room. Pippa's eyes flared open and she went for her gun - but realised just in time who it was.

  A woman.

  Dressed neatly in body-hugging black. Black boots. Gloves. She had long brown hair, tied back with a simple clip. She wore several guns and a QGM PAD at her hip.

  "You've got it?"

  "Yeah."

  This was Karella. One of Steinhauer's... personal operatives.

  Combat X.

  QGM's assassins. Very, very deadly.

  Pippa handed over the 3Core, and sat back on the bed, hugging her knees. Karella watched Pippa for a while, as if gauging her, as if reading her innermost thoughts. Some said Combat X were psychic. But then, some said Combat X were immortal. Obviously, that was just plain bullshit. Pippa had killed one; assassinated the assassin. She gave a cold smile.

  "I hope it was worth it," said Karella, her voice soft.

  "Me too. Lots of good people died to deliver that fucker to Steinhauer."

  "If it works, we'll be free of war."

  Pippa smiled. "We'll never be free of war," she said. "That's why people like you and I thrive."

  Karella nodded, and disappeared backwards, easing from the high window and closing it without a sound. A few minutes later, there was a knock at her door. A steward stood outside.

  "The ceremony is about to begin, Lady."

  "Thank you. I'll be there shortly."

  The Main Hall of the Org Palace was huge, and lined with thousands of dignitaries, nobles, politicians and merchants, people of money, people of royalty, people of power on the planet of Cloneworld and from Trade Clusters beyond. Here to witness this great occasion, to celebrate this landmark of history.

  As Pippa stepped through the solid gold double doors, a troop of trumpeters struck up a loud, bright piece, and Pippa walked alone down the thick red carpet, feeling almost as if she was attending a wedding.

  As a bride?

  Yeah, right. I wish.