Cloneworld - 04 (10 page)

Then silence followed, amidst the steam of spilled cabbage.

Franco Haggis uncurled, stood up, and stared hard at Mrs Strogger. "You ruined that deal, didn't you?"

"What deal?"

"My TV-being-famous-and-making-lots-of-money deal. Look! You squashed everybody! Or shot them!" Franco stared up at the huge, heavily armoured war org, and frowned. "What the bloody buggering hell happened to you? I thought you were a little old lady?"

"I've had upgrades," said Mrs Strogger, somewhat smugly.

"I can see that. You look like, like a, like a, I don't
know
what you look like, but you look like a big one!"

Mrs Strogger clanked forward, five tonnes of war-grade steel tenuously attached to the deranged mind of a little old woman. She leered down at Franco. Lasers aligned, and six red dots appeared over Franco's near-naked body. Suddenly, the laser cannon in Franco's hands felt like a toy. He licked his lips nervously.

"I think our situation has changed," said Mrs Strogger, voice growing stronger by the second.

"Er," said Franco, uneasily. "Meaning?"

"I think you're a pulpy little pathetic human, just like these pulpy little pathetic gangers. You're the same breed, aren't you, bastad? Little sacks of pissy shit, held together by nothing more than stretchy flesh all willing to break apart under my org claws. Well..."

Franco's eyes widened.
No
, he thought.
This can't be happening... I'm just about to bloody escape this carnage, and make a pretty penny into the bargain, and my enemies turn out to be my friends and my friend turns out to be my enemy and what's the whole bloody world coming to, eh? I ask you, eh?

"Can't we talk about this?" said Franco, stalling for time. He was good at that.

"Orgs hate gangers," said Mrs Strogger, bright teeth gleaming, drool drooling from ancient jaws. "We are superior. We are more powerful. We are at war! Or we should be... and you are just another insignificant organic blob to be squashed out of existence..."

With a whine, and a clank, Mrs Strogger attacked...

CHAPTER THREE

CHASE ME

She had performed missions before. A thousand missions. She'd killed men, women, children, of every colour and "alien" species to walk the multiple exotic soils of the thousands of worlds of Quad-Gal. She'd blown up factories, oil rigs, military installations, tank depots, politicians' headquarters, schools, and hospitals; she knew no mercy, had no empathy, felt no remorse. She knew the myriad memories would have blurred into one, if they'd not been forcibly erased. They were erased to protect her. If tortured, her pain tolerance was incredibly high, but without memories, she could not talk at all. But then, she had never been caught. She was efficient. She was...
perfect.

Now, she walked through the rainswept city. The streets were deserted. She stopped at an intersection, glanced up and down the gleaming black roads, and considered. She knew where she must go. She knew where her target would go. After all - she smiled - they had something very important in common. Something more intimate than a shared lover, a childhood memory, a death-defying experience, a bonding of drug-minds. Yes. They had something
perfect
linking them... She glanced down. Saw her reflection in a puddle. And the shimmering, ghostly, almost
metallic
face of Pippa stared back.

Pippa was not in the best of moods. She sat watching the TV, as all manner of images flashed and flickered across at first one, then five, then twenty, then
every single channel
(which was a lot) being beamed throughout the Quad-Gal and Super High-UF Frequency Light Electron TV carrier signals (SHUFFLE TV, they called it). And the longer Pippa watched, from the pilot's crib of the Fast Attack Hornet
Metallika,
the more her colour miraculously shifted. First, she turned from pink to a deep, rich pink, then from a deep, rich pink to red, then from red to purple, and finally she finished her chameleonic display by turning a furious white.

"Franco," she muttered, as yet another report slammed across the SHUFFLE. In the report,
there
was Franco's beaming face
, there
was Franco's gurning face,
there
was Franco's shouting face,
there
was Franco wandering the streets,
there
was Franco drinking in a bar, all caught on Global Cams, and finally,
there
was Franco Haggis, covert Combat K operative, cutting off the head of Opera, Quad-Gal's most famous reality TV host, on the live TV show
Torture!
Well, it didn't exactly show him cutting off her head, but in the confusion of bobbing cameras and pandemonium, Opera collapsed to the floor with her head rolling away and blood gouting from her neck stump, and Franco was in the midst of the mess being beaten by the over-zealous RGPF.

Pippa lowered her face into her hands and groaned.

"How are you feeling?" said Alice, the ship computer, her voice - as usual - calm and soothing.

"That little bastard has killed our mission."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Well, it looks to me like he dropped in via chute and, instead of following our leads in Nechudnazzar, decided to go on a drinking spree which led to his arrest and placement on the TV show
Torture!
"

"That's a good show," observed Alice.

"Not any more. Franco cut off Opera's head."

"That's yet to be proved."

Pippa eyed the glittering computer banks with narrowed eyes. "Oh yeah? Well, I know Franco Haggis, and I know what the mad little ginger bastard is capable of. I can't
believe
I trusted him, I can't believe I allowed him to persuade me to let him go in. I thought he was grief-stricken because of Keenan's death. I thought he was a changed character. But oh, no, not Franco bloody Haggis, how can I have been so stupid, Alice? You'd think I would have learnt my lesson. I swear, when I get my hands on him, I'm going to beat him till he squeals like a pig on the end of a spear."

"Beat him?"

"Yes," snarled Pippa, fists clenched. "But first we've got to rescue him. We'll rescue him, then I'll batter him like a plate of stinking fish. What's the situation with the AAMs?"

"You know what the situation is," said Alice, soothingly.

The problem was, Cloneworld was a seething pit of violence and warfare. Centuries earlier, the Quad-Gal Peace Unification Army had imposed certain rules and restrictions on the planet in order to try and halt its seemingly permanently escalating violence spilling out and polluting the rest of the Quad-Gal territories. Now, Cloneworld was a zero-trade zone. And Cloneworld was prohibited for all forms of aircraft. This, reasoned QGM, would cut down on the gangers' and orgs' ability to wage war against one another. After all, the terraformed planet was two vast continents separated by the most huge and terrible mountain range ever built by man or alien: The Teeth, an eight-thousand-kilometre stretch of mountain range sitting on its own discrete island, and pretty much impassable except by the most foolhardy of climbers. Yes, there were two sea passages through The Teeth - the northern, and aptly named,
The Squeeze,
and the southern
Mek Straits
, which were easily patrolled by both races and spent at least eight months of the year clogged with ice chunks. To enforce with zero tolerance the restrictions on all forms of aircraft, QGM had installed several thousand automated AI Anti-Aircraft gunbots - also known as Quad-Gal GASGAMs. These highly intelligent and highly proficient machines had space-grade armour and the intelligence to be self-repairing and self-sustaining, with sufficient weaponry to bring down anything as small as a P Class Hunter, a fast one-man spacecraft, all the way up to Class III Bombers and Offense Frigates.

The problem was, if Pippa took their ship in, looking for Franco, there was a chance she'd get blown from the sky by a rogue wandering GASGAM. Pippa was the best pilot in Quad-Gal, without a shadow of a doubt; but she'd been saving her skills only in the case of emergency - not a Franco exfil necessitated by a screwed-up mission after a heavy drinking session. Pippa was not a happy bunny.

"Can't we target the AIs using brain scans? They show up as advanced cerebral activity."

"They can cloak activity," said Alice. "You know this. We can go in, but it'll be dangerous. The only thing we've got going for us is
speed.
Unfortunately, we don't know what weapons the gunbots are carrying, and in that kind of situation... Goodbye, cruel world."

"Hmm."

Pippa put her chin on her fist and brooded. She knew what she'd have to do, and as she stared from the portal at the slowly spinning world below, a wealth of green and blue and amber scattered with millions of square miles of cloud cover, filled with millions of gangers and orgs - all of which loathed humans, and especially QGM,
especially Combat K
because of sanctions imposed on their particular strain of humanity - well, Pippa loathed the idea of putting her neck on the line for Franco's ten pints of Guinness.

"Ship requesting permission to dock."

"
What?"
snapped Pippa, leaping from her crib. "Alice - I'm amazed! No proximity warnings? No registration idents?"

"I am sorry," said Alice, and to her credit, she sounded ashamed. "I was given strict orders. From the top. Only now was I allowed to break silence. Truly, Pippa, I did not enjoy the subterfuge."

"Who is it?"

"General Tarly Winters."

"The Ice Queen?"

"That would be common derogatory slang in your soldiery ranks, yes; I will advise you she does not take kindly to the term. After all, she is a ranking QGM general."

"Who's with her?" said Pippa, eyes hooded. She did not get on well with other women. In fact, she did not get on well with
people.
Full stop.

"She is alone," said Alice. "I have granted docking clearances. Three minutes until she steps on board."

"Alone?" said Pippa. "A
general,
coming here, alone..." and then it dawned on her. "This is because of Franco, is it not?"

"I have no knowledge of the general's intentions," said Alice, soothingly.

"Ha, yeah, like you'd fucking tell
me.
"

"That hurts, Pippa. Truly, it hurts."

"Well keep me in the damn loop then!" she snapped, and slumped back to her crib. "And - tell
Her Highness
that I'm not in the fucking mood for visitors. And if she doesn't like it, she can fuck off back to whatever Class X disgorged her fat frumpy arse."

There came a
clunk,
and a shudder as the two Hornets connected via fluid umbilical.

Below, Cloneworld spun.

Eventually, the door slid open with a hiss and Pippa was aware of a presence entering
Metallika.
She did not turn, but studiously kept her back to the general and her hand on the pistol in her belt.
Let her fucking push me,
she thought.
I dare her. Double dare!

Without a word, the figure moved through the Hornet; when finally Pippa did turn, eaten by curiosity, Tarly Winters had gone. Frowning, Pippa stood and moved down the narrow corridor to the four sleeping quarters. She stopped. Standing in one of the rooms, unpacking a small kit-bag, was a tall, lithe woman with a tumble of curled red hair.

Pippa coughed.

Tarly Winters turned, and smiled at Pippa: a cold smile, from a china-white face, piercing green eyes boring into and
through
Pippa like titaniumIII drill-bits through diamond.

"You would be Pippa, Combat K operative under Section 57 of QGM. I thank you for your cooperation."

"I'm cooperating?" said Pippa, her own voice cold as the grave.

"Oh yes," said the general, and turned back to her unpacking. With a
clack,
she placed a sniper rifle case on the high shelf above her bunk.

"Why are you unpacking?" said Pippa, frowning despite herself.

Tarly stopped, and turned. Again, her smile was frosty, and Pippa recalled a hundred stories of
The Ice Queen
from her days in the canteens of a hundred different bases across a scatter of random planets.

"Well," she said, and ran a hand through her long, deeply luscious red hair, "I have to unpack my clothes if I am to be sleeping here for a while - or else, how would I be able to find them to dress?"

"You're not staying here," snapped Pippa, too quickly.

"Really?"

"Er, what I meant to say, Tarly..."

"General Winters," said General Winters. Again, that thin-lipped smile.

"What I meant to say, was..."

"I have been assigned to assist you concerning the 'Franco Haggis Situation.'"

"The 'Franco Haggis Situation'?" Pippa gave a bitter smile.

"Hey, lady, don't act like a naïve whore the first time a sailor gets his cock out. You fucked up, soldier. You both fucked up
bad.
In fact, you both fucked up
so bad
I can guarantee your arses will be slung in the brig when we hit Realtime Bigshow out of here. You hearing me, little lady?"