Cloneworld - 04 (27 page)

"You read the specsheets?" said Franco, aghast. It was rare he even read his Mission Directive.

"Oh yes," said Tarly, and gave Franco a slow wink. "I like to be prepared for any eventuality."

"Okay, you guys, listen up," said Queen Strogger, and now, despite her wizened old appearance, mixed in with that of a rusting old mekbot, she seemed that little bit more... assertive. She was getting closer to home. She was out of Clone Terra, over The Teeth, and on her way to the good old Org States.

"I suppose you have a plan?" said Franco, feeling suddenly weary. Here he was, in enemy territory - so to speak - in just his combat shorts and sandals. This was a familiar feeling. God had a way of catching Franco Haggis with his pants round his ankles.

"We need to fire the engines," said Strogger. "And head east."

"You're nearly home," said Tarly, and placed a hand on hers.

The org smiled and gave a nod. But her glowing green eyes seemed to grow more intense, and Franco felt he had a premonition; suddenly, the old org didn't feel quite so friendly, and he felt just a little bit like a pawn in somebody else's diseased shitgame.

"I'll soon be back on the throne," she whispered.

Dawn was breaking. Franco was cold, and he and Tarly had snuggled together for warmth, her in her pink pyjamas, and he with his bushy masculine chest. As he'd pointed out, though, it was all about survival. And he'd failed to pack WarSuits in the crates.

Still huddled together, as a salty sea breeze washed over them, and waves lapped the sides of the boat through an early morning mist, Tarly pulled away a little and stared at Franco.

"You packed the emergency crates?" she said, softly, half-confused by sleep.

"Oh yes," said Franco.

Tarly considered this. "But they're hermetically sealed," she said.

"I hermetically
unsealed
them," Franco said.

"But why?" asked Tarly, slowly.

Franco grinned, showing his missing tooth. "Well, you know, I wouldn't like to trust my life in an emergency situation to some other fucking monkey garbage, would I?"

Tarly felt a groan welling within her. "Franco," she said, "the emergency crates are packed by QGM. They contain
everything
you could possibly need in an emergency situation on
any
of the worlds in the Life Bubble. I mean, food, shelters, oxygen,
everything. Every
eventuality. They're the product of centuries of research! Statistics!
Science!
"

"Yes. But."

"'Yes, but' what?"

"Well, all this research baloney is just donkey bollocks, isn't it? Hey, I have my own Franco lifestyle to think about, alreet? For example, I wouldn't like to be trapped out in the wilderness with no damn and bloody horseradish to speak of."

"Horseradish?"

"Or sausages."

"Sausages."

"So I repacked the emergency crates."

"Franco, that's illegal."

"Ach, fuck off."

"And it's immoral!"

"Get fucked and over to fuck."

"You'll be court-martialled for this!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, lock me up. Stop moaning. We have everything we need, right?"

Tarly stood, taking charge. Leaning forward slightly to counter the thrust of the boat as it headed east, its engines on stealth, she moved to the first crate. She punched in the release code and the digital locks hummed, releasing the lid. Inside, there were lots of tins.

"Lots of tins?" she said, slowly.

Franco appeared beside her, staring over the rim of the emergency crate. "Yeah," he said, frowning. "Food rations. And stuff."

"What food?"

"PreCheese."

"Go on."

"Cube Sausage."

"Go on."

"Jars of horseradish. Well, you have to spice up the PreCheese and Cube Sausage, don't you, because it all tastes so fucking
rancid
."

"The thought occurs, Francis, that you could just pack something that wasn't rancid?"

"Never thought of that."

"What else?"

"What do you mean, 'what else'?"

"What other foodstuffs?"

"PreCheese."

"You said that."

"Cube Sausage."

"You said that, as well."

"
Weeeell...
"

"If you say 'horseradish,' you're going over the side, buddy. I didn't train to be an elite assassin killer to listen to the ramblings of an idiot on a boat."

"Inflatable."

"Whatever. So go on. What other food have you brought? We could be marooned here for weeks. Months."

"I confess," said Franco, holding up both hands, palms outwards as early morning rays of crimson bounced from the metal of his cyborg little finger, "that
that
pretty much sums up our menu for the duration."

"Just PreCheese, Cube Sausage and horseradish?"

"Yup."

"Are you fucking
insane?
"

Franco considered this. "Yup," he said. "But look on the bright side. You're the guys who keep giving me contracts, yeah? I must be doing
something
right!" He grinned, and it was a Big Grin, and it was The Grin of the Mad.

"So what else have you packed into the Franco-style emergency rations for the terminally suicidal?"

"Stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Yeah, stuff."

"Like what stuff?"

Franco shrugged. His lower lip had come out a little bit.

"Are there medical kits?"

"No."

"Oxygen tanks?"

"No."

"Rebreathers?"

"No."

"Alien-Inoc pills?"

"Um... no."

"Antibiots? Nanopills? Warpills?"

"No. No. And, er, no."

"Hydrapills?"

"No."

"Tools?"

"I got my sonic screwdriver!"

"Very funny.
Real
tools?"

"No."

"Body bags?"

"Why would I need body bags?"

"Haven't you worked that one out yet?"

"Ahh. I see."

"Guns?"

"Of course, guns! Yes!"

"At last," muttered Tarly, as Franco removed another lid from another crate and displayed a small arsenal of weaponry. There were Techrims, Kekras, D5, D6 and D7 shotguns, MPKs, and many, many boxes of ammunition, along with knives and TagLasers.

"See," said Franco, puffing out his chest. "I'm not
completely
devoid of my senses. Weapons and food. All that a bad girl wants."

"Hmm," said Tarly, and lifted a D5. She loaded it with ff micro-shells, and pumped the weapon with a satisfying
cla-clack.
"The irony is," she said, half smiling, "we're pretty much on friendly soil now. We're with Queen Strogger and heading for her homeland. It's not like we're going to
need
weapons, is it?"

"I wouldn't say that," said Queen Strogger, quietly.

"How's that, then?" said Franco.

"Yes, I am Queen of the orgs. But our land is, shall we say, a very dangerous place."

"With what?" snapped Franco.

"Rogue orgs," said Strogger, simply. "They're everywhere. They roam the Badlands, the Wildlands, the Heartlands, the Fuklands. There's the DIYers, lashed-up half-machines with a grudge against any org who didn't
do it yourself.
Vast, ugly brutes! They're not very bright."

"Okay," said Tarly, slowly. "And what else?"

"There's the Dorgs, which roam in packs. An experiment that went wrong, hundreds of years ago. Then there's all manner of corrupt systems and AI self-built self-modified freaks of metal and bondage which roam the land and sea."

"Land and sea, you say?" said Franco, looking nervously over the side of the boat. Sorry; inflatable.

Queen Strogger gave a brittle laugh. "Oh, don't be silly. Nothing in the water - the salt rots components faster than you removed Opera's head! No, these are..."

"Go on?"

"Well, like,
pirates.
"

"Pirates?" said Franco, and stared at Tarly, but Tarly was staring across the Teeth Ocean behind him. She gave a short nod.

"You mean, like those?" she said, quietly.

Queen Strogger turned, as did Franco. They stared at the huge, old galleon, vast and black-timbered, and sitting on the horizon like a cat on a fence. It seemed motionless, its vast sails billowing gently in the dawn light. Franco could have sworn the sails were black. With some kind of white, skeletal motif.

"Er," said Tarly.

"Ha, don't worry," grinned Franco. "Don't ye worry ye not about that old heap of rusting shitty sea wreckage! This is a Quad-Gal Military boat, good for a billion miles on the same hydrogen cell. That fucking heap of junk wouldn't stand a chance catching us."

"Good," said Tarly, voice tight.

"Why good?"

"Because they've just seen us."

Franco grinned, and flapped his hand with a look of scornful dismissal on his face. "Look, don't ye worry ye none. One, they couldn't catch us if their lives depended on it; and two, and this kinda makes me laugh 'til I poop in my pants, but they have
old cannons.
Oh, ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum, me hearties, those ol' cannon balls wouldn't reach us in a billion, trillion, million..."

There came a distant
boom
, and a flash of actinic fire, accompanied by billows of smoke, a long drawn-out whistling sound, and an explosion of water several metres from their inflatable boat, which sent a small wave washing over them, drenching them instantly and nearly capsizing the little rubber vessel.

"Shee-
at!"
screeched Franco.

"You were saying?" snapped Tarly, infused with anger.

In the distance, the org pirate ship had fully made its turn. Around it, something seemed to glow on the water, which started to thrash. A whine reverberated, like a slap across the rolling ocean, crashing from the ship in a wild acoustic rhythm. The pirate ship started to accelerate. It was fast. No. Shit. It was
fast.

"Er," said Franco.

"It's had upgrades," said Queen Strogger, almost wearily. Her face had a haunted, hunted look. "Just as I thought we were, aha, out of the water. What did that wise old Philosopher The Meechelle Org III say? Out of the fire and into the frying pan?" She covered her face with her armoured hands. "If they discover who I am..."

"Yes?" said Franco, only half interested.

"They'll burn me alive."

"Oh." He considered this. "What kind of upgrades have they got?"

"A hyperdrive."

"Pretty impressive, for an old sea galleon. Does it, er, work?"

"Well, our patrol boats could never catch them," growled Strogger.

"Ah." Franco was watching the huge barnacle-encrusted pirate galleon. Despite his foolhardy mocking,
avast
, the ship was gaining on them at quite a lick. On the upper deck Franco could almost, if he squinted hard enough, imagine a hearty crew of large and fearsome deformed cyborgs wearing, if he wasn't very much mistaken, period costume. "Oh, gods," he said. "How do I get myself into this mad brain-twisting shit, time after time?"

It's your own fucking fault,
hissed his subconscious.
You crashed the bloody Hornet, remember?

"They're catching us," said Tarly, calmly, and started strapping various guns around and about her lithe, powerful body. "If they catch us, I'm not going out without a fucking fight!"

Franco scrambled for the guns, and strapped a goodly number about himself as well, until he bristled like a steel hedgehog.

Then they stood, watching the galleon bear down on them.

There was little else they could do.

Its vast, barnacle-encrusted timbers reared over them, creaking, and Franco had been right. The crew were vast and fearsome looking, a hybrid army of men and women, heavily machine-augmented, totally ugly in their shining, spiky, gear-driven ferocity. The ship's engines whined, and the hyperdrive which made the sea glow suddenly powered down. The galleon towered over the little QGM inflatable, and nudged it gently, with a tiny... bump.

"They're The Pirates," said Queen Strogger.

"Eh?" snapped Franco.

"The Pirates of the Orgibbean."

"Ahoy there!" boomed a vast, reverberating, totally machismo-infused voice from above. "This is Cap'n Bluetit, a-har! Known as the Rabid Arsehole of the Ocean - and I've been called a lot worse even by the people I love, so I have, a-har-har-har - and let me tell you, weak meat humans, you are about to be boarded! So submit your weapons, drop your trousers, bend over, and... a-har-har! take it like a man!"